Dutch anti-piracy organization claims victory, but world yawns as more appear in its place.
Some 75 Dutch BitTorrent tracker sites were taken down from the internet recently for hosting torrent trackers on their sites.
BREI made the complaint that the sites made money by giving “preferential treatment” to users that paid a “donation.” Such users were enabled to download unlimited amounts of illegal content for a set period of time.
The action concerned sites including Allmypower.org, Luckytorrents.org, Allmymovies.org, Digi-tor.org and Seederstor.org. In total, these sites had around 100,000 links to copyright infringing material and half a million Dutch users. The sites were in Dutch but offered access to international popular content.
“Clearly this is an organization aimed at illegally making money by systematically organizing the theft of other people’s creative work through a chain of relatively small sites,” says BREIN director Tim Kuik: “Knowingly linking to illegal content is illegal itself. These sites did so structurally. They are party to a crime.”
BREIN filed a complaint with the Fiscal Police about this organized chain of illegal sites. “We have taken down the sites ourselves through civil notices. Further information with respect to the operators and the brain behind them will be forwarded to the police as well,” adds Kuik: “We urge the prosecution of this criminal organization. At the same time, we are continuing our own investigation in order to claim damages from those responsible through civil action.”
If only BREIN would realize that two BitTorrent tracker sites are certain to appear in place of each that it has shuttered, just as as happened with OiNK, another one of its past targets.
