Mininova flattened by Dutch court
Ordered to remove BitTorrent files or face big fine
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A civil court has ordered Pirate Bay rival Mininova to carpet bomb all "infringing" BitTorrent files held on its servers within the next three months or face a fine of up to €5m ($7.16m).
Dutch-based pro-copyright lobby group Stichting Brein, which recently took aim at TPB’s operations, brought the lawsuit against Mininova.
The Utrecht District Court ruled* today in favour of Stichting Brein, which accused Mininova of inciting users to violate copyrights and profiting from infringement by running ads on the site.
“Mininova encourages users of its platform to make copyright material accessible via its platform, helps users find the desired file with the copyrighted work and ensures through its 'administrators' and 'moderators' for the copyrighted works that are accessible through its platform, also useful for its users,” the court said.
It disagreed with Mininova’s assertion that it was impossible for it to track and delete torrents that point to copyrighted materials, such as films, music and games.
Mininova was already in the process of removing some files from its site after being hit with a takedown notice from copyright holders. However, the court ruled that this move wasn’t far reaching enough.
"The court believes it's generally known that commercially made films, games, music and TV series are copyrighted and that these works are only copyright-free in exceptional cases," it ruled.
Mininova said it was mulling an appeal.
“We are obviously not satisfied with this ruling,” said Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer.
“The result of this ruling for Mininova is that we have to re-evaluate our business operations. At this time, we cannot determine what this will actually entail or imply. We will have to examine the verdict thoroughly first.”
Elsewhere in the land of the freeloaders, The Pirate Bay sale - which has faced fierce opposition and accusations of insider trading since the Global Gaming Factory first stepped in to buy the BitTorrent tracker earlier this summer - is meant to complete tomorrow. ®
*The Google translation of the Mininova verdict from Dutch to English is here.
COMMENTS
@anti piracy trolls also
Do your employers really think that trolling on forums actually changes anyone's opinion of them or just helps people realize that they have so much cash to waste that they can pay trolls.
You could release your work for free and still get paid with advertising but you refuse to do this. You could allow people to download what they want for a fixed fee per month but you refuse to do this too.
The world has moved on yet you still refuse to move with it. There's a whole generation of people that's used to watching what they want when they want it.
@The anti-piracy trolls
Happily sitting here downloading anime and movies all day long and doing so without any risk whatsoever of legal retribution. Many of the major anime studios do not go after fan subbers until they are almost ready to release their own translations and since the vast majority of fan subbers will stop distrubition when asked to, there's really no legal troubles there at all.
Secondly because downloading music and movies, even copyright ones to which I do not have a license is legal here. Distributing those things is ofcourse illegal.
Denial won't save pirates
You can run, whine and cry in prison, but if you pirate you pay the price.
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