BREIN, the dutch MPAA/RIAA, is hoping to force Mininova to introduce a filtering system for copyright files.
Torrent search engine Mininova is to be targeted by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN for distribution of copyright materials, in the continuation of a wave of lawsuits and takedowns aimed at BitTorrent trackers.
An article in
The Register claims that BREIN has been looking to negotiate with Mininova for around eighteen months, promising no legal action if the popular site would introduce a filtering system to keep copyright materials from being indexed by the search facility. Those discussions seem to have broken down, with BREIN now moving the battle to the courtroom and seeking for a judicial injunction against Mininova requiring the engine to halt all activities.
The owner of Mininova, Erik Dubbelboer, isn't too concerned. In an interview with Dutch news site
Nu.nl, he claimed the presence of a YouTube-style takedown policy that allows copyright holders to request the removal of their content was enough to keep the law on his side. Dubbelboer stated during the interview that “
Mininova is just too big to filter each file,” and that reactive takedowns rather than proactive filtering was “
the only proper way to [prevent piracy]” on the site which plays host to an estimated thirty million unique visitors and over five billion downloads every month.
This isn't the first time that BREIN has threatened to see BitTorrent trackers in the courtroom. Back in December the anti-piracy organisation was
targeting ISPs that hosted BitTorrent search sites including Mininova, Torrentspy, and BTJunkie. Even as far back as 2005 the anti-piracy group was
threatening NewNova.org, which was the successor to SuprNova.org. It's clear that BREIN aren't going to settle for a reactive removal policy, but it's hard to see how Mininova – even allowing for advertising revenue the anti-piracy group estimates nets its owner thousands of euros each month – could possibly afford to develop and maintain an efficient filtering system that would keep the group off its back – and which would likely alienate the users that have made the site one of the most popular file sharing destinations around.
Any Mininova users worrying about their personal data during the trial, or do you trust Dubbelboer to do the right thing and allow the site to disappear
Torrentspy-style rather than betray the privacy of his users? Share your thoughts over in
the forums.
So + 2 for the torrenters, +1 (possibly) for the corps.
The war goes on, the pirates keep winning battles.
LOL
there is no way that they can win the war against piracy.
Then again, piracy is piracy, but I still think these people are protecting their own interests rather than saying 'it kills creativity..', and have no bones about picking on the silent majority. I actually have faith in the people not to abuse their position, over on XDA developers some guys make ROMs for mobile phones, basically chop up the existing one and tweak it / improve it and accept donations... even the more modest ones are making £200 a month in donations, and XDA dev is nowhere near as massive as some of the on-line communities about! (Maybe that's not a lot to some.. but it's more than I earn in a month at the moment hah :p)
Of course, taking down Mininova won't solve the root causes of piracy. Game, movie, software and music developers and producers don't expect it to any more than you or I. They are doing this to stick it to the people who make money by facilitating the illegal distribution of their work. A worthy endeavor, in my opinion. If someone were making money off a game I made without my express permission, I would go after them too, whether or not it would actually stop people from pirating the thing, because I don't like it when people make money off my work. And yes, there are numerous copies of my own employer company's software available on Mininova, illegally, making them money they did not earn. /reported knowing it will be back up in days under a different name. The simple fact of the matter is that removal by request of the owner of the content won't work as a method of preventing copyrighted material from becoming available on Mininova. The owners know this, and knowing they need illegal files in order to make money, they taut this as the "best solution" to preventing piracy on the site. Why? Because they know it won't work.
Again, if we want to stop all this nonsense, the only way to go about it is to do what the first poster should have done a long time ago: stop stealing digital products and giving traffic and therefore revenue to sites like Mininova which exist because of piracy.
Why do we need to Bypass content filtering ?
As you might know mininova starts filtering copyrighted material, i dont upload protected content But i fear that such filters may also delete
files wich are not violating copyrights as example Creative Commons music wich has a 4 second part wich is similar to an protected title. Also many Companies demand licenses and copyright on files wich are definitely in the Public Domain and not Copyrighted anymore.
As Example i uploaded charlie Chaplin videos from 1917 on youtube but this videos got deledet because a Movie comapany claimed false
copyrights on these videos. Just have a look to the offical US Copyright law wich says that any work prior 1922 is not Copyrighted anymore.
So im writing this Text not to help you violating copyright but avoiding that legal content might be blocked by failure or Grief of some
Movie and Music companies. I just want to protect your legal content from being censored.
On the other side i can understand mininova since they do not want that users missuse their Content distribution service to share copyrighted stuff. Because this would be quite dangerous for mininova if illegal copyrighted content is hosted directly on their servers. So help mininova by not uploading any copyrighted stuff to their CD service !
Howto:
It is very very easy to bypass such filters.
Just put your files in a encrypted .rar or .zip archive and choose an password, so The filtersoftware cannot acces the archive to look if the original file is is on the Banlist or not.
Then use Gimp or Photoshop to create an imagefile wich includes the password and save it in the same folder as the archive, use some filters and effects to make in unreadeable for machines.
Then create the Torrent from this folder. So Downloaders get the password and can
Open the file but the automated filters of film/music industry cannot open it and cannot see if the file is on their banlist or not.
Works like a Captcha i think you understand what i mean ;)
I also think this way is also the Best for mininova because since mininova is doing everything
to remove copyrighted material even if they have no succes Curts will see no reason to forbid mininova
because it is not the fault of mininova that the content filter does not work for encrypted files.
As Example Rapidshare is allready using copyright filters but they cannot stop users from uploading these files
since all Rapidshare users use encryption. It think this method will also work quite well with torrents.
So dont worry and continue sharing your legal content, the net was build for freedom and it is impossible to take this freedom away.
I hope you and also the mininova staff understand my viewpoint, i dont want to help people sharing illegal content but prevent legal files from being censored like youtubes content recognition does.
Thanks for reading ;)
* yeah diggity.. encryption already does this in