Mininova Ordered to Remove Copyrighted Material

Written By Jared Moya

August 26, 2009 | 5 Comments

Dutch court gives it 3 months to remove torrent trackers that link to copyrighted material or face fines of €1000 euro ($1,422 USD) per link up to a maximum of €5m ($7.13m USD).

Dutch BitTorrent tracker site Mininova has been ordered by a court in that country to remove all torrent trackers that link to copyrighted material or face fines of €1000 euro ($1,422 USD) per link up to a maximum of 5 million euro (7.13m USD).

BREIN, the anti-piracy group behind the lawsuit, complained that current efforts by Mininova to remove infringing material don’t go far enough.

The court agreed, saying that even though the site doesn’t actually host copyrighted material it nonetheless helps users obtain it and therefore violate copyright laws.

Mininova acted unlawfully by “giving opportunity to, encouraging and profiting from infringements on copyroght and neighboring rights,” reads the ruling.

“Please note that we do not host any copyrighted content on this website,” reads Mininova’s copyright policy. “The torrent (metadata) files that we host do not contain data that might be copyrighted in any way. However, we offer a service to remove torrents from our website if the copyright holder of the content requests so.”

Mininova has 3 months to either comply with the order or file an appeal, the latter I’m sure the site is currently considering.

“This verdict is what we asked for,” says BREIN director Tim Kuik. “A site like Mininova is responsible for what happens on the site and must prevent illegal links to movies, TV series, music, video games and other content. This milestone verdict that enables us to stop the wholesale access to illegal content that such sites supply.”

It also stresses that it’s important because it will help the “development and growth of new legal business models,” but doesn’t say how.

It was only because of illegal file-sharing and decreasing CD sales that the music industry decided it was time to get on board with the likes of Apples iTunes and license their music for digital downloading, albeit grudgingly. Even then it took years to get rid of DRM so that consumers finally had a comparable alternative to P2P available.

The same has been true of the movie industry, which thanks to another year of record breaking profits, still fails to give consumers the sort of selection and on-demand viewing options that P2P provides. It has no reason to to see the “growth of new legal business models” because it hasn’t been faced with the sort of economic decline that finally forced teh music industry to listen to consumers.

It still thinks you shouldn’t even be allowed to make a backup copy of a purchased DVD because apparently the price of a DVD is predicated on the “notion of certain use rights associated with certain price points.” In other words, it’s counting on it wearing out or being lost and you having to buy a replacement.

Either way, the case is another success of sorts for BREIN who earlier this month managed to get a Dutch court to order Swedish BitTorrent tracker site the Pirate Bay to block Dutch citizens or face a 30,000 euros ($42,906 USD) p/day penalty. It is currently appealing that decision.

Stay tuned.

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Jared Moya
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus

But BREIN does realize that Mininova doesn't know which files are copyrighted or not? In a sane (at least in my mind) legal system, BREIN will have to point out each and every link they wanted to be removed, instead of just pointing to "all copyrighted material" in general. Then the fines would apply to those links and those links only. Each one of the links that wasn't removed would then result in a fine of €1000. But their claim is ridiculous. You can't go searching a database with millions of torrents and delete all the "copyrighted" ones, because there is no firm establishment on which torrent file leads to copyrighted material. Perhaps the copyright holders don't want their stuff removed (even if this is rarely the case).

fonzbear2000

You will LOVE this!: http://www.dslreports.com/forum/r22909605-BT-25-Great-Pirate-Bay-Alternatives

DrewWilson

This is an extremely slippery slope thanks to this "court". It may sound good on paper in some persons mind who had their mind warped by the whole idea that free publicity is bad that has been enabled by P2P, but this treads on a license to arbitrarily censor. Many people realized the dangers of the INDUCE act in the United States. What is happening here is a gradual resurrection of the kind of dangerous thinking that was behind laws like INDUCE in another part of the world. I won't say who it was by, but I distinctly recall a case in Canada where someone was sued for linking to a site that linked to a site that linked to a site that contained allegedly defamatory content. I wonder if something like that will happen here only in the name of copyright "protection" eventually. If I were someone in Google (or any other search engine for that matter) right now, I'd be very, and I mean VERY concerned at what was ruled here if linking to copyrighted material constitutes liability because this has the potential to criminalize search engines in the Netherlands.