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).

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.