Department of Justice Finally Files Appeal to ShareConnector Verdict
Five years after the administrator of the eDonkey link site ShareConnector was found innocent in a criminal trial that was lead by the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, the Department of Justice announced that it will appeal this verdict.
In 2004, when most of the BitTorrent sites only had regular visitors, ShareConnector was extremely popular as it served eDonkey links to millions of file-sharers every month. BREIN did not let this go unnoticed, however, which lead to a criminal investigation. This also headed into an investigation into the admin of ShareConnector and the people behind the site Release4U.
Both sites were eventually shut down with the assistance of BRIEN convincing the FIOD-ECD, a Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police. The sites were not only shut down but the servers were placed under police custody for inspection in hopes of finding trace
BREIN had successfully convinced the FIOD-ECD – Fiscal Investigation Unit of the Dutch Police – to shut down both sites and take the servers into custody for a thorough inspection, hoping to discover criminal activities.
After the case went to court, the administrator of ShareConnector was found innocent and only handed a couple of small monetary fines. The ruling stated that FIOD-ECD did not provide evidence to support that ShareConnector was involved in copyright infringement or that the organizations were criminal in nature.
Although the Department did say in 2007 that it would appeal this verdict, nothing happened until this week when the Department finally filed the appeal.
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