Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has been very active recently, targeting various release groups that frequent popular torrent sites.
Yesterday the Hollywood-backed group announced another victory after obtaining ex-parte injunctions against three members of the torrent release group 2Lions-Team.
The three are prohibited from infringing any copyrights of BREIN members in the future, or face a fine of €2,000 per day.
BREIN also reached out of court settlements of roughly €15,000 with five 2Lions-Team members (including the three defendants), for a total damages amount of €67,500.
2Lions-Team has uploaded thousands of files to popular torrent sites including The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and ExtraTorrent. The group published a wide variety of titles including movies and TV-shows such as The Revenant, Making a Murderer, The Walking Dead, as well as several local titles.
According to BREIN the group is responsible for uploading thousands of torrents, some of which were downloaded over 470,000 times. As part of the settlements, most torrents have now been pulled offline.
Indeed, several “2lionsteam” related accounts and their torrents have now been deleted from The Pirate Bay, ExtraTorrent and other sites.
The release group’s own website is no longer functioning either, but points to a messages from BREIN instead.
“Making copyrighted works available through torrents is an unauthorized reproduction and publication which infringes on the copyrights and related rights of BREIN affiliated rightsholders,” the message reads.
Judging from recent BREIN pursuits, the anti-piracy group is not interested in bankrupting any of the uploaders. For the level of the settlements in this case, BREIN says it took the financial capabilities of the 2Lions-Team into account as well.
Over the past several months BREIN has been pursuing uploaders more aggressively and this trend is expected to continue.
Last week the anti-piracy group was granted permission to monitor IP-addresses of torrent users on a broad scale, suggesting that it will also target individual BitTorrent users who share pirated content on a regular basis.
Update: We’ve clarified that there are five settlements. The fines in the ex-parte order only apply if the defendants continue their work.
