Dutch court guts Mininova

this is shocking. i watch us tv shows and the only way to get them is torrent. this sucks !!!!!!!!!!!!!

will continue to try and if all fails i will increase my business prices to cover and let these guys suffer

Does they already announced below which brand they will host their torrent index?

Or will they be brave this time and stay ever strong like Piratebay?

Also, these courts seem clueless about the non-public torrent sites, where the real piracy goes on.

Obama's secret negotiations, Mandelson's corporate interest meddling, Virgin's new 'deep packet' inspection and Mininova's capitulation, clearly its party time for the RIAA gang.

When you see something like this it is everybody else's will and not the state or the court itself.

So of course there is no democracy or whatever they try to push to the stupid press, only private/corporate interest.

The thing that blows my mind is how there is no investigation into who is it that gives those orders and manipulates legal and state mechanisms?!?

As I recall only terrorist, mafia or similar criminals do such large scale operations.

Because if they can do it plainly in front of everybody's eyes, someone is covering them, or letting them do it, so obviously there is no democracy and the government failed and should resign.

Interesting if you put it that way, no? :) RIAA is not the only one that can view facts in a skewed way...

How can you do this? Did you know how many problums we face, its a best & nice way to see which you want.

this is unbeleviable for us, please do us a fovour cancel this order

As everybody else says this is shocking news.

this sucks, where we should now download movies and games???

big thumb down.

The message should be clear that pirates are going to continue to be prosecuted as are facilitators of piracy such as th Pirate Bay dudes.

How long will it be before we are told what file format we must use?
Micro$oft has done it any many ways.
MKV will soon be forgotten in favour of something of lower quality and where we must pay to use it.
Quality will go out the door in favour of better compression ratios, if you want a better copy pay $45 per disk/ per movie etc etc.

I'd love to hear about how a person working at this legal firm was found to have an illegal copy of something in their possession. (I wonder if the script kiddies could use their time in this pursuit). You'd have to think that these Solicitors are connected to the net at home as well - and how strong their firewalls are.

Pirate Radio in many places turned the then radio world upside down - for the better of mankind.

But many droll people will see similarities between Pirates and Terrorists, I seem to think of them as freedom fighters.

Many of us in here are those www freedom fighters.

If it was not for the slack attitude that my local TV station had to programme continuity and the time they aired some of my favourites. [they would drop the programme without notice and put tennis on or just drop it to a later slot].
You can see why over 40,000 people would P2P that show each week, because the service by the commercial entities was flawed.
Bottom line P2P has grown to the huge numbers not because people just want to cheat, but because the service level they want is not obtainable.

The more pirates they lock up the better for society.

The organization is called 'Brein', not 'Brien'.
Brein means 'Brain'. Something they really don't have if you look at their 'crime' fighting techniques.

Although mininova.org was a very good general site for torrent searches (far better than the useless search on The Pirate Bay), if you're into US TV like I am, then I'll point you to this site:

dysu.hs

(Move up the alphabet by one letter to get the real address, just in case Le Inq doesn't approve :-) )

That site basically cut my mininova.org use by half since it pretty well covers every US TV torrent release that I download.

Quick reminder that the brein foundation is a private group that ONLY represents people that signed up with them, which are a few dutch artists, so to disallow all torrents cannot be simply be the result of brein's suit but must be considered an interpretation of the idiot judges who make up their own laws, especially since mininova didn't run a tracker and only had the .torrent hashfiles, perhaps the ruling is merely meant to remind people that dutch 'democracy' is pretty much fake BS, and their 'liberalism' ended many decades ago.

What the hell is that address supposed to be for that website?

I'll point you to this site:

dysu.hs

(Move up the alphabet by one letter to get the real address, just in case Le Inq doesn't approve :-) )

You got to be kidding, right?

Ive been using mininova for YEARS, this is a truly sad day.

To the guys who think sharers are pirates, think about this: ALL the reasons why digital piracy is "wrong" could also be directed at libraries - one copy, shared among thousands, reduced income for authors, shared over and over again, etc etc. It's all true, yet it's all irrelevant. Where would our civilisation be if libraries had been banned? And why are they allowed now? After all, if torrents are illegal, shouldn't libraries be too?

What you are, is a retard in the original sense - you are helping retard the growth of digital society. Sharing information freely - whether it be scientific, medical, or entertainment - is good for all, even the creators.

Please stop spouting the "party line" like good little citizens. You're a human being, not a robot. Think before you speak.

Copyright laws exist to protect art. You steal and or illegally distribute copyright protected works and you go to jail. Libraries do not illegal distribute copyright protected art.

"You steal and or illegally distribute copyright protected works and you go to jail."

I "steal and or illegally distribute copyright protected works" and I never have been and never will go to jail.

Doesn't that get your panties twisted?

You know, the fact that no matter how self-righteous you act, I'll still be getting my music, games, movies, and shows for freeeeeeee.

:)

I laugh at the people who think they'll never get prosecuted. See The Pirate Bay Boys for proof that denial can cost you dearly and land you in prison.

I hope that the more successful they are with the courts in enforcing their copy right laws, the quicker they will go bankrupt (those companies profiting from the "old order").

I hope that society does not make a u-turn.
I hope that everyone downloading music on mininova is going to now go out and buy cds? That way an old outmoded unnecessary, unproductive business model can be sustained?

Who are the regular folks defending the big corporate monsters? Seriously, they must be getting paid to post these comments or have a hard-on for big, profiteering entities that contribute nothing and leech off of society.

I'm going to find new free sources online, or work with the free stuff I can find on the existing sources.

For those that argue its illegal - let's pretend it's illegal to brush your teeth - does that make it wrong?

Tell me, how does one out compete the distribution channels for this stuff?
Because, it's an artificial market, held up by the "laws" you love so much.

If I build a better mouse trap, but the government not only makes it illegal, but then puts those who use it in jail - it's ok as long as it's the law?

Might the law be outdated? Might it be the result of established corptacracy with big money and lobbyest organizations getting their way?

And you so passionately defend these laws...wow..Why would a politician represent you if you cannot even represent yourself?

anyways... it'd be ridiculous to expect major companies to roll over and die.

As they go out kicking and screaming though, as another commenter mentioned, they're retarding us all.

"The more pirates they lock up the better for society."

How so? You're not under the illusion that that will somehow reduce pirating are you?

"I laugh at the people who think they'll never get prosecuted. See The Pirate Bay Boys for proof that denial can cost you dearly and land you in prison."

Here in Australia the chance of going to jail is zero, hasn't happened to anyone here yet and never will. In fact were in the world has you average P2P user ever gone to jail?

"Doesn't that get your panties twisted?"

I'll tell you what will really twist their panties - the fact that if you go to The Pirate Bay - you will find that it is still very much alive and well and operating (There have been some minor technical changes, they now only supply magnet links and apparently they're now a long running internet performance art but they still effectively do the same job as always).

That's right after all this legal wrangling, and even though the founders may well end up doing some time, THE PIRATE BAY IS STILL ALIVE AND OPERATING, and will be for the foreseeable future (jailing/suing the founders won't interrupt supply - well not for more than a couple of hours - the internet does not work like that)!

Also for what it's worth, I personally pay for 99% of the stuff I download, that is if it's cheap and easily available, but if I encounter a problem it comes to me free via P2P. You don't want to release your movie or music video to my part of the world just yet? Tough luck it comes to me now and for free via P2P. I (the average user) pay you (the music/film company) because I feel like it, not because I have to, pissing me off does not make you bigger bucks.

Whatever the morality pirating is here to stay. You don't successfully fight it by suing/jailing people.

As usual, everyone completely misunderstands the technology behind BitTorrent, as this is completely evident.

MiniNova and other sites like The Pirate Bay, DO NOT HOST ILLEGAL CONTENT ON THEIR SERVERS WHAT SO EVER. they just run trackers for INDIVIDUALS to share the data among their peers.

It's the peers that have the illegal content on their computers, and it's them that share it NOT the "torrent sites" that host the small *.torrent files.

All these sites do is tell users how to connect to each other, and how to send and receive data between each other, NOTHING MORE!

If a pirate gets a letter saying he is guilty of having pirated content on his pc, is he entitled to say, "well, come over and have a look". If there is nothing there, then surely you cannot be charged.

How can you be prosecuted for stealing something that 'something' is not in your posession. After all, computer file isnt a physical thing, just the storage medium. You cant prosecute lock-up garage owners for being burgulars unless you open it up and find stolen goods.

This applies of course to the victims of pirates who hack into their wifi, not of course to pirates who simply reformat their data drive with a low level formatting tool, clear their registry and remove their wifi security to plead ignorance. :-) Ahem....

For the clueless there is a digital trail when you access a server. You can destroy your PC and you'll still go to prison.

You missed the point.

You said that libraries don't distribute illegally. But that's because we have defined what they do as legal.

They DO distribute, and by sharing books this way they reduce the end income of creators. That is undeniable. Everyone who borrows a book instead of buying one means one less copy sold for the author.

And yet we as a society have decided to view their activities as legal. So why not torrents?

You might not remember that originally when photocopiers began to appear in libraries, it was deemed that photocopying even one page of a book was "illegal".

The entire world, including the librarians in charge of the machines, ignored this and after a while the law was changed so that copying a few pages from a book was deemed "fair use".

The point is, we are a society, and *WE* decide what is fair or not, and what is legal or not.

Like it or not, most people think P2P is fair use - even of "copyrighted" material. That's because it is.

The copyright law you defend has been perverted beyond it's original intent. Crafted in a non digital age, when books were created by hand by monks in a process that could take years to make just ONE book, copyright made sense - fair recompense for work done.

But how fair is it to recompense people millions of times for work done? Or billions? Or one hundred years later?

Don't just spout pat answers that make you feel law abiding. No doubt you are, but it's an outdated, perverted law that only serves to further corporate interests. In almost all cases, the copyrights are no longer owned by the original creators - so copyright does not protect their interests. Instead it just makes the robber barons of this age - the media corporations - filthy, stinking rich. (Another undeniable fact.)

In this digital age, torrents are OUR millenium's version of the free library. Instead of being some sort of defender of the right (Which is a good thing to be, but you're misguided) you are in fact like the vandals, determined to tear down and destroy that which you don't understand.

I think you need to reexamine your assumptions, ask yourself WHY laws exist, and what they protect, instead of only following orders like a good german. Times DO change, and so do laws - examine history if you don't believe me. Things that were once illegal become legal. (Look at gay marriage, for example, or medical marijuana). Just because something is illegal, doesn't make it wrong.

Just out of curiosity, how old are you?