Mininova, one of the Internet’s most popular torrent sites, has now severely limited its services following a court ruling in the Netherlands
By Chris Farnell
The decision follows a court ruling in Utrecht last August, which upheld several demands by copyright enforcement organization BREIN. BREIN launched a civil procedure against Mininova in May, demanding that the torrenting website filter all torrent files that point to copyright protected works.
Although the court stated that Mininova did not infringe copyright or neighboring rights, it ruled that Mininova would have to prevent uploads of torrents to the site if they refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. Since the ruling, Mininova has tested several filtering systems, but found that it was not feasible technically or operationally to have a 100 percent effective filter.
Mininova will now restrict its services to content distribution, allowing producers and artists to easily publish and distribute their content for free through the website.
In a statement, the company said: “The launch of Content Distribution has proven to be a success. Countless content owners have used Content Distribution to distribute their content (e.g. albums and documentaries) for free to millions of users.”
INEFFECTIVE POLICING
However, some have argued that attempting to police piracy through the courts is ineffective. Blogger, writer and journalist Cory Doctorow, who is an advocate for liberalizing copyright laws and who uses Creative Commons licensing for his own books, published a blog yesterday on Peter Mandelson’s announcement that he would cut illegal downloads by 70 percent next year.
Doctorow argued: “What was once relatively benign – it would have been trivial to charge for access to Napster and audit what was downloaded to pay rightsholders – has become utterly virulent. The entertainment industry's reliance on the courts for a cheap and dirty fix to all its problems has mutated filesharing into a strain of antibiotic-resistant bacteria that has no one to sue except for individual filesharers.”
Edited by Ellie Duncan
Source: http://mnstat.com/images/blog/index.html
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