BREIN goes after TorrentFactory
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- That didn’t take long.
Yesterday p2pnet revealed the existence of TorrentFactory.org, the new indexing site in town.
Today we learn from its 15-year-old owner, Pablo, over in Switzerland, that Holland’s BREIN — a kind of nasty combination of the RIAA and MPAA — is already trying to get TorrentFactory.org shut down.
He’s been given 24 hours to comply, he told p2pnet this morning.
Here’s the BREIN missive >>>
Dear sir,
Let me first introduce the BREIN foundation, then discuss what our issue is with your unlawful activities and finally what you must do to operate legitimately.
The BREIN foundation acts against piracy of entertainment content (music, film, computer games and other interactive software) on behalf of rights holders and interested parties such as authors, performing artists, publishers, producers and distributors [1]. Together these rights holders represent the lion’s share of the intellectual property rights on entertainment content worldwide. BREIN takes civil action in the Netherlands against the making available via the internet of files with entertainment content without authorization of these rights holders. In the event that the gravity and extent of the case give cause to it BREIN files a complaint regarding such sites and servers to the relevant authorities for criminal investigation and prosecution.
Your website http://www.torrentfactory.org is structurally making use of the availability on internet of unauthorized files with entertainment content without taking into account the interests of copyright and neighbouring rights holders. Through Torrentfactory.org an enormous quantity of popular titles in the area of film, music, games and interactive consumer software is made available, a substantial number of which are published by the rights holders represented by BREIN and have not been licensed for distribution through the your system. By initiating, enabling, facilitating, stimulating and participating in the distribution of content files, you are responsible for any such content made available through your website and under a legal duty to prevent infringement.
By making available said unauthorised content through your website, you are acting unlawful and violating the copyrights and neighbouring rights of others, including the rights holders represented by BREIN. This is causing extensive damage to rights holders for which you are liable[2].
In the interest of and on behalf of the rights holders represented by BREIN we request that you cease and desist the abovementioned unlawful activities within the next 24 hours.
I thank you in advance for your cooperation.
Sincerely,
P. Haringsma
Legal Affairs BREIN Foundation
TorrentFactory sucked up 1,025 hours of labour (”I know the exact time because we had a party 2 days back for the 1,000th hour”), and the basic search engine takes almost 1,000,000 of lines of code, said p2pnet yesterdsayl going on:
“But before the cartels get all hot and bothered, TorrentFactory is a means to another end, Pablo told me, also stressing he’s not making any money out of it. ‘Distributing torrents isn’t my main purpose, he says. I’ll keep improving the engine and serve other kind of data like pictures, videos, links or whatever — maybe an archive service — but I haven’t got that far yet.
“At the moment he has six servers at home “running to download and split the content, and two web servers,” he says.
“Does it work? It did for me. Lightning fast. And sponsored by DediServ.eu, it’s totally ad-free.
“Pablo says he started out three or four years ago with a programing teacher who’s the local development director of a famous Canadian firm.
“He’s currently working on his algorithm to improve the crawling rate, and preparing new projects.”
Participating organizations in BREIN “are amongst others the music authors organization BumaStemra, the collective rights organization of artist and producers SENA, the Dutch association of producers and importers of sound and image carriers NVPI, sections Audio, Video and Interactive, the Dutch publishers association NUV, the Dutch association of film distributors NVF, the international association of American film producers MPA and the international federation of the phonographic industry IFPI,” it boasts.
It’s almost as though BREIN has torn a page out of the book written by Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s RIAA. It went after Brianna LaHara, a 12-year-old the Big 4 extortion unit accused of being a massive illegal distributor of copyrighted corporate ‘product’.
But definitely stay tuned.
Pablo says he’s is already talking with his sponsor, DediServ.eu, about what technical possibilities they have to remedy to this problem.
Jon Newton - p2pnet
..… and identi.ca
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
January, 2010
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/feed
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for details.
January 13th, 2010 at 10:20 am
yeah that was pretty fast but I’m conversing with the guys from BREIN to find a solution together.
January 13th, 2010 at 11:32 am
Err, we can tell you the responce without any conversation “shut down completely or we’ll sue you and never stop harrasing you and sue you some more and try to put you in jail!!”
There’s no “negotiating” to be had here
January 13th, 2010 at 2:54 pm
The entertainment corporate parasites will have harder time to claim that this site is for profit since for the time being they don’t advertise.
However like the pirate bay and as the traffic rise they will need a source of income to pay for the traffic.
Now they have to corrupt a judge again. They will probably use one of the judge they already corrupted.
The pirate bay is not for profit and never was and will never be.
As far as negotiating with Brein, Don’t bother.
You can not negotiate with terrorists and we all know what we have to do about then to protect our societies.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:17 pm
This is where I was going yesterday.
And the biggest reason copyright has to die.
IP holders are now just sitting on their rights, shooting down anything and everything that amounts to an innovative thought, and resembles an infringement. And they’re backed by all these corrupted “trade groups” and “IP enforcement” regimes, who will quickly instigate the threats necessary to discourage the innovator. They don’t even need to have just cause or prove anything in court, as the innovator usually hasn’t got the money to properly launch/defend the legal challenges.
Not only do you have to avoid publicizing any such innovations in progress, but you also have to get full legal advice and support before announcing it to the public.
January 13th, 2010 at 4:52 pm
@ DA: “Not only do you have to avoid publicizing any such innovations in progress, but you also have to get full legal advice and support before announcing it to the public.”
Sadly, the only people who can afford lawyers, etc, are the cartels. The rest of us take risks.
I think Pablo probably getting a lot out of this not financially, but in other equally important ways.
Cheers!
January 13th, 2010 at 4:57 pm
It is interesting that this has not been reported elsewhere. Is that significant?
January 13th, 2010 at 5:34 pm
@ Paulus: “Is that significant?”
Not in any meaningful way. It’s being seen where it should be seen, and that’s what matters. The net is a big place with lots of hidden corners.
Cheers!
January 13th, 2010 at 8:04 pm
” It is interesting that this has not been reported elsewhere. Is that significant? ”
It’s normal.
None of the big extortion companies want the ‘legitimate’ press to talk about threatening a 15 year old boy
with nebulous legal action. It will make them look really bad and make you a potential martyr.
It’s to their advantage to keep this out of the mainstream press.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:52 am
“It’s to their advantage to keep this out of the mainstream press.”
Which is why it’s a good idea to get it into the mainstream, any way you can, if at all possible, before any further damage is done to the project.
The MSM may be controlled by the same people who are hassling you, but they can’t prevent a “seemingly small” story from getting covered by local papers and local television. If the story starts to make enough “noise” there, it will eventually get picked up from some of the “compartmentalized” sections of the mainstream and circulated before half of the people at the top even know what they’re airing.
January 14th, 2010 at 4:53 am
The anti-P2P hired guns are known to regularly read P2P news sites in their hunt for potential victims. In many cases it’s been a death sentence to feature a not-yet-widely-known torrent site in a news story. For this reason many file sharing sites tell their members NOT to talk about the site. Fame has its price.
It looks like this time they went on the attack before the ink was even dry.
January 14th, 2010 at 5:27 am
I hope its not my fault with my keyword comment on the other story
Sorry lol
Im suprised it didnt end up in your Junk email folder, Pablo lol
January 14th, 2010 at 6:59 am
If you run a pirate site, don’t have it hosted at leaseweb. They cooperate with BRIEN and will give your name and address to the police
January 14th, 2010 at 4:53 pm
wow, I haven’t seen all those comments, if you got new, please post here http://www.p2pnet.net/story/33821