Thread: BREIN Uses Court Win As Leverage To Wipe Out Usenet Sites

Following their recent legal victory over Usenet portal FTD, anti-piracy group BREIN have been using this momentum to scare even more file-sharing related sites into submission. The Hollywood-linked outfit has just announced that it has forced the closure of a further 11 Usenet-related sites servicing 900,000 members although reports suggest the damage could be even deeper. The question is, however, were they even illegal?


Netherlands-based anti-piracy group BREIN is one of the few entities worldwide that spends significant amounts of time directly trying to force the closure of file-sharing connected sites. The group uses its resources to gain legal precedents and then hits ISPs over the head with them in order to force the shuttering of ‘infringing’ domains.

BREIN is now reporting that it has just forced the closure of 11 Usenet-related sites with a combined membership in excess of 900,000. As usual the Netherlands based outfit has refrained from formally naming its targets on its website in order to starve them of publicity should they choose to bounce back with new hosts. However, at least eight sites – nzbkingdom.net, Twilightnzb.com, Furiousnzb.net, Shreknzb.com, Team-Casanova.com, Crosspost.nl, Cobra-team.nl and FTAClub.net – are displaying messages which indicate interference from BREIN.

According to Webwereld, Dutch Binaries Program remains up but has ceased reporting the location of unauthorized content on Usenet. Other sites listed as affected include Movie2b and D4D.

The closures come hot on the heels of BREIN’s victory against the 500,000 member FTD Usenet portal earlier this month. Although FTD didn’t host or even link to any copyrighted material, after a prolonged legal battle a court ruled that the site was illegal because just 13 FTD members from more than half a million not only reported the location of infringing files on the worldwide Usenet system, but also uploaded them there. FTD will shut down March 1st.

However, despite the overall defeat for FTD, the court proceedings showed that the site didn’t breach copyrights, that the overwhelming percentage of its users acted legally and that the ‘spotting’ (reporting the location) of copyright material is also within the law.

So, the big question is this. When BREIN waved the FTD verdict at these sites and/or their hosts in order to force closure or compliance, had they previously gathered evidence to prove that members of these sites had been uploading content to Usenet?

TorrentFreak posed this very question to BREIN boss Tim Kuik this morning but we have yet to receive a response. However, for lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet, who has intimate knowledge of the law in this area through his connections with FTD, things aren’t so cut and dried.

“BREIN is using the FTD verdict to threaten other sites into closing. Even though the verdict clearly said downloading is legal and ‘facilitating’ downloading is legal as well, BREIN is now saying that sites that provide NZB files are facilitating illegal downloading,” he explained.

“This is a gross misrepresentation of what the verdict was actually about. Unfortunately it’s typical for BREIN to present their own view rather than the facts in order to force sites offline.”

The verdict in the FTD case clarified some points of law in The Netherlands, including the legality of downloading material even if from an illegal source. The court also concluded that facilitating downloading, even when this is done from an illegal source, cannot be unlawful.

Nevertheless, when an intimidating Hollywood proxy comes knocking on your door, shutting down is clearly an option being favored by many.

Source: http://torrentfreak.com/brein-uses-c...-sites-110221/

Hey listen I have been around the world enough to know that it does not matter how much time and resources any organization spend on anti-piracy efforts, its money and human capital down the proverbial wastepipe.
As long as there is money to be had for those going after piracy domains they will always exist.
And likewise, whenever there is a huge demand for anything, matters not what it is, you can shovel sand all you want until the cows come home because it’s futile against a rising avalanche of righteous noncompliant authoritarianism.
No different than the social dynamics of the so called drug war, prohibition , prostitution, and any black market for that matter that has ever existed in the history of mankind, and other human activities where millions of people are doing the same thing ;you will never put a plug large enough to stem the tide and ever hope to wipe it out.
We will simply move into a different domain as long as people are smart, innovative and wish to thumb their noses at the philosophy of corrupted evil Capitalism, aspects of private property rights ad infinitem.
The system is designed to favor the ruling class including the monopolizing of patents, squashing out competition and artisan innovations, and a myriad of other ways the corrupted Corporate State wishes to control you and how you spend your time and money.
The entire structural framework for which western society organizes the means by which we meet our essential needs is wholly self-destructive unto itself.
Besides, if I have a copy of something that belongs to me using their own historical philosophical foundation of how private property is defined, than my possession of said property means that I will determine how, when, where, and to whom I wish to share my property.
Example: In the old days if I bought a VHS movie and ran into a friend at work and gave it to him/her so they could take it home for their family to see the movie that is my freedom to choose.
It’s no different than if someone bought a lawnmower and a neighbor wished to borrow it, or a chainsaw a DVD player, my vacuum cleaner, $10 bucks or anything else of mine I wish to share with 1 person or 100 Trillion by way of an electronic device.
Would you rather I walk across the street, drive around the block, hop a freight train to Detroit or San Francisco, board a Jet for Shang Hai or Uzbekistan Hong to physically hand you my DVD to borrow it, or send it Fed X so you can view the movie, or have software to be more productive because you’re a poor person locked out by the same forces that made you unable to buy it to begin with the store” Or send it to you Fed X?
Innovation of technology as it is intended in an age of immense creativity and Neoliberal Capitalism on gone mad should not penalize your ability to be kind and generous by sharing with others something the benefit of the commons should already have been paramount in its application for the welfare of the whole.
To start splitting hairs on which pieces of tangible objects they say I can and cannot share with other human beings in the name of good charity is antithetical to human dignity and only the philosophy of a corporate tyrant.
Besides the notion that western society is governed by the "Rule of Law" was forever to be shown the sham it always was with George W. Bush and his clan of criminals. The real criminals are the titans on Wall Street and the corrupted Corporate State elite.
One set of rules for you and me, and one for them which means they do what they want weather it is against the law or not, and if you wanna gripe about it whaddya going to do, huh?
Nada, they will squash you like a bug and grind you into dust and throw the key away. This planet needs a seed started in Seattle in 99' to grow to a global revolution to bring this corporate state down once and for all.

When they hijack control of the levers that govern the world you live in through their wealth (Study the Corporate Wall Street Coup de tat on the U.S. House of Representatives on the 1st Bank Bailout Vote that rejected forcing taxpayers to subsidize the wealth of the Corporate State Class of people, and 3 days later a re-vote was taken and it passed? Why the change in heart? That’s your proof if you have blinders on). http://www.alternet.org/economy/99876/10_things_you_should_know_about_bush%27s_trillion_ dollar_fleecing_plan/?page=entire
Remember one thing if you ever learn anything about life. They are your enemy. I have fought these skunks since the days of 1964 as a radical dissident whose mission it is to destroy the status corporate quo. This is one small way to stick my thorny butt in their face and exercise freedom of choice.
When the notion of the Rule of Law in Western Civilization was forever to be shown for the sham it always was when a tyrant George Bush using the face of a perverted democracy walks free in the name of an inverted totalitarian corporate state, we have a moral imperative to act on behalf of human dignity to bring it down; we are at war for survival of human dignity that gives meaning to life.

This is my 2 cents.