Anyone with an interest in BitTorrent sites will tell you that many of them are hosted in the Netherlands, due to what is perceived by many as a legal gray area. Dozens of sites inhabit the servers at hosts such as LeaseWeb, despite a few being kicked out or forced to move to other countries in recent months.

Known by most for its scene ‘warez’ release database hosted at NFOrce.NL, another major torrent site host is NFOrce, which gained mainstream notoriety after the OiNK tracker was busted while being hosted by the company. Now it seems that anti-piracy outfit BREIN - who received press this week for their announced legal action against BitTorrent giant mininova - has NFOrce and sites hosted there, firmly in its spotlight.

A few weeks ago NFOrce was approached by BREIN, who demanded the host to shut down SceneAccess (SCC) and hand over the identity of the site administrator. Initially, NFOrce did not respond to these demands, so in response, BREIN filed a preliminary injunction. A few days before this announcement SceneAccess mysteriously went down, with NFOrce claiming this was unrelated to BREIN.

Despite the fact that SceneAccess had moved to a new host outside The Netherlands, BREIN did not back off, and still demanded the customer information. Now, just days before the court hearing, NFOrce handed over the name and address information for the owner of SceneAccess which, luckily for them, turned out to be false.

The court case scheduled for today has now been canceled. BREIN claims that they are still owed costs relating to the case, but nonetheless, they are happy that their tactics of host-threatening are working, as other sites - and there are many of them - are said to be leaving NFOrce.

BREIN director Tim Kuik says that they don’t want hosts such as NFOrce “to be a safe haven for sites and servers that illegally offer movies, music, games and other interactive software”, whilst omitting to mention that BitTorrent sites host no infringing material. Going on to expand on the scope of operations, Kuik says: “These include bittorrent sites, edonkey, ftp servers and servers that carry out illegal activities. It is not the technology [at fault] but what those sites and servers do with that technology. If that is unlawful or invasive than we take action. The hosting provider will be asked to take the site or server offline, and tell us who their customer is.”

BREIN would like to hold hosts liable for on-going damages if they keep torrent sites running when it becomes clear they are in possession of false contact details. NFOrce was encouraged to find additional information which would help in tracking down the owner of SceneAccess and hand it to BREIN, which it did. This information is still being checked, but will likely lead BREIN into another dead end, especially if the tone of the SceneAccess owner is taken into consideration:

“Well as some of you already know, BREIN threatened our host (NFOrce), and we had to move. We are currently on a temporary server, we will move to a new server (in a safe location) in the next few days. There’s nothing to worry about, our database server wasn’t on NFOrce, and we securely deleted (38 passes) all files from nforce before we left. We might have some downtime at some point (because of the move from the temp server to the new server) but keep seeding because, we are not going anywhere”

After the initial panic and worry of pending legal action, champagne bottles will probably be metaphorically cracked open but sadly for them, BREIN won’t be getting drunk, at least not in celebration. SceneAccess is no longer hosted in the Netherlands, so BREIN can be congratulated for changing the location of the server, but without affecting the operational capability of the site - or identifying the owner.

Yesterday the collaborative subtitle creation site WikiSubtitles received a cease and desist letter from a Spanish anti-piracy outfit, as explained by the admin, Smalley:

“Today I received a beautiful copy and paste notification from the Anti-Piracy Federation (FAP), which warns me that if we do not close the site, they will take legal action against me. I will engage a lawyer to advise me, but we may close Wikisubtitles temporarily as we clarify the matter. I hope from my heart that this is not the end of Wikisubtitles.”

Initially it appeared that the site’s host, BlueHost closed the site after the complaint, but that closure seems to have been lifted after some legal issues were addressed. However, the site is now voluntarily closed pending a proper legal evaluation by WikiSubtitles’ lawyer.

Although there are many cases of subtitle files that are ripped from DVD, the communities at sites like WikiSubtitles have their own translators who create custom subtitles for tv programming and movies. The subtitles are created by enthusiasts from scratch using tools provided by the site, for the benefit of those who don’t understand the original language and for the deaf. A user at WikiSubtitles hopes that no data has been lost as a result of the shutdown as along with friends, they were right in the middle of manually subtitling some Dr Who episodes.

WikiSubtitles is not on its own in receiving such threats. Alexe1, the admin of SoloSubtitulos has also been on the end of similar treatment, and he advises Smalley to “simply ignore these emails.” Alexϳ maintains his site is entirely non-commercial, doesn’t distribute copyrighted works, and falls short every month when it comes to raising enough cash to pay the hosting bills.

Like many, Alexϳ’s motivation for creating his own subtitles was so that a disabled family member could enjoy what he was enjoying: “I personally write subtitles because my grandmother was born deaf and with those subtitles she is now able to enjoy current TV series and movies.”

“How do you think this fact would look in a trial?”

We do not link to actual torrent files because linking to files that link to files that may be copyrighted is something that might get us in trouble.

The data is collected by TorrentFreak, and is for informational and educational reference only.

RSS feed for the weekly DVDrip chart.

As of May 20, 2008…

BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit responsible for shuttering or forcing torrent sites such as Demonoid overseas, has announced that it will take BitTorrent-behemoth Mininova to court. BREIN hopes the court will force Mininova to filter its search results, so that all .torrent files which may point to unauthorized content are removed.

Mininova is currently the largest BitTorrent site with over 30 million unique visitors per month. Mininova displays user submitted torrents and carries legitimate premium content from publishers such as CBC. Unlike The Pirate Bay, the site does not have their own BitTorrent tracker.

It transpires that BREIN and Mininova have been secretly trying to reach a mutually beneficial agreement for more than a year now, but when one side believes they are acting within the law and the other side believes the opposite, a legal clash seems inevitable.

Erik Dubbelboer, one of the co-founders of Mininova, told TorrentFreak that Mininova will not cave in to pressure from BREIN. He expects to have more details about the upcoming lawsuit later this week: “We will proceed to court with full confidence. We operate within the law, as we maintain our ‘notice and take down’ policy. That is, we remove search results if a copyright holder asks us to.”

Sites like YouTube operate in a similar manner - if the site receives a demand from a copyright holder that it should take content down, it does so under its DMCA obligations and there is no further action. Mininova doesn’t even host any unauthorized content, only .torrent files, which should make it even less of a target than YouTube. Typically, BREIN doesn’t see it that way.

Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN, said that Mininova’s business model is based on illegal activity. “A notice and take down procedure is absolutely insufficient for a site that makes use of unauthorized files, structurally and systematically,” he added.

The announced legal action will focus on the question whether Mininova has to filter their search results or not. BREIN wants Mininova to install such a filter, Mininova on the other hand doesn’t want to censor the search results. The outcome of the case is likely to have a huge impact on the future of other BitTorrent sites, and even sites such as Google and YouTube.