Mininova Next in BitTorrent Fight
Mininova is told by local court to remove all copyrighted links. The ruling in a civil court case means that popular torrent site Mininova has to remove all copyrighted material within three months, or the site operators face a fine up to $7.16M fine.
Since Mininova is able to actively filter malware out of the BitTorrent archives, the Dutch court said Mininova could also block copyrighted content. All tracker files and links to any files that infringe on movie or music copyrights must be removed as soon as possible.
The court case was originally filed by Stichting BREIN, a Dutch antipiracy group with support from movie and music studios.
“The court didn’t agree with Mininova’s argument that it was impossible for it to find and remove torrents that point to copyrighted materials,” according to the legal findings.
Torrent sites have been under increased legal attack, as The Pirate Bay lost in a Swedish court. Even so, Mininova started removing copyrighted works after receiving takedown notices, while The Pirate Bay refused to take down copyrighted material.
Despite its immediate removal of files, the court said Mininova’s efforts weren’t enough, and site operators should work under the assumption all commercial media available through the site are copyrighted. Furthermore, a random selection of files listed by Mininova indicated as may has 80 to 90 percent of them were copyrighted.
Source: DailyTech
