Intellectual Property Rights Holders Association Blog

Global Gaming Factory, set to take over the Pirate Bay, is seeking the approval from the entertainment industry by installing a torrent removal and approval system. BREIN, however, the Dutch anti-piracy group does not believe that this is a full-proof plan and wants something better if GGF plans on dodging any legality issues.

GGF has planned on giving copyright holders the chance to remove infringing torrents and approve other to be published in hopes of avoiding possible conflicts. Furthermore, users will have to pay to have access to the site.

BREIN issued a release stating that the plans for the new Pirate Bay are not sufficient to appease copyright holders. BREIN director, Tim Kuik, said, “In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content on the website and remove it. That is insufficient.” He further stated, “The point is that The Pirate Bay is responsible for what happens on the site. They must keep preventive supervision and take care that no illegal torrents become available on the site. The site provides access to content which to an important and even overwhelming extent is illegal.”

Global Gaming Factory, set to take over the Pirate Bay, is seeking the approval from the entertainment industry by installing a torrent removal and approval system. BREIN, however, the Dutch anti-piracy group does not believe that this is a full-proof plan and wants something better if GGF plans on dodging any legality issues.

GGF has planned on giving copyright holders the chance to remove infringing torrents and approve other to be published in hopes of avoiding possible conflicts. Furthermore, users will have to pay to have access to the site.

BREIN issued a release stating that the plans for the new Pirate Bay are not sufficient to appease copyright holders. BREIN director, Tim Kuik, said, “In the proposed system the right holder must detect illegal content on the website and remove it. That is insufficient.” He further stated, “The point is that The Pirate Bay is responsible for what happens on the site. They must keep preventive supervision and take care that no illegal torrents become available on the site. The site provides access to content which to an important and even overwhelming extent is illegal.”

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.

Gottfrid Svarholm, founder of the Pirate Bay came across Tim Kuik, the head of the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN recently.  The two encountered each other at Random, a hacker conference that takes place in the Netherlands.  It was a few mere months ago that BREIN took the Pirate Bay founder to court to have the site shut down; BREIN won the civil case.

Currently, the verdict on the case has been put on hold, which is allowing the three defendants of the Pirate Bay to appeal the verdict.  The meeting between Svarhalm and Kuik occurred during a panel discussion on copyright laws and the future of media distribution at the conference.  Although Svarholm was in the audience, he took the opportunity to address Kuik.

Asking Kuik, “Can you please tell me where that profit is, because I’d like some of it,” which included an overwhelming applause from the audience.  Swarholm wanted to know if there was evidentiary support that the Pirate Bay is making money from distributed copyright works.

Kuik replied, “You tell me, you’re here, somebody paid for your trip,” implying that the revenue from the Pirate Bay had paid for his trip to The Netherlands.  Swartholm, who is currently working as a software programmer in Asia said, “I paid for this trip by developing computer software for my customers,” again with cheers from the audience.

Kuik’s ultimate rebuttal went on to back up the fact that a Swedish investigative journalist earned hundreds of thousands of kroner in one year due to advertisements, however, this may not even be enough money to cover the hardware and bandwidth costs.