Anti-Piracy Group Asks Court to Gag The Pirate Party
The Hollywood-backed anti-piracy outfit BREIN is going all out to make The Pirate Bay inaccessible to the Dutch public. After successfully blocking The Pirate Bay through court, and then censoring proxy sites that linked to it, they are now demanding that the Pirate Party should be banned from “discussing” how easily Internet censorship can be circumvented. The political party is baffled by the proposed gag-order and has asked the court to lift all censorship efforts.
The legal battle over Internet censorship is reaching new heights in the Netherlands, as the local anti-piracy group BREIN is now asking the court to gag the Pirate Party. Read more...
Copyright Corruption Scandal Surrounds Anti-Piracy Campaign
Anti-piracy group BREIN is caught up in a huge copyright scandal in the Netherlands. A musician who composed a track for use at a local film festival later found it being used without permission in an anti-piracy campaign. He is now claiming at least a million euros for the unauthorized distribution of his work on DVDs. To make matters even worse, a board member of a royalty collection agency offered to to help the composer to recoup the money, but only if he received 33% of the loot.
A story currently unfolding in the Netherlands painfully exposes the double standards and corruption that can be found in some parts of the copyright industry.
It all started back in 2006, when the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group BREIN reportedly asked musician Melchior Rietveldt to compose music for an anti-piracy video. The video in question was to be shown at a local film festival, and under these strict conditions the composer accepted the job. Read more...
Payment Provider Hands Over Name of Torrent Site Owner
After being threatened with a lawsuit by the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy outfit BREIN, a Dutch payment provider has handed over the personal details of a torrent site owner. The anti-piracy group is targeting payment providers in order to reveal the identity of site owners, as the information owners give to hosting companies is often false.
Hundreds of torrent sites, private BitTorrent trackers in particular, allow their users to donate money in exchange for extra features. In part, the site owners use this money to keep their sites afloat, but if it’s up to anti-piracy watchdog BREIN, this type of funding will become their downfall.
Earlier this month BREIN announced that it would query payment providers such as PayPal for the personal information of account holders connected to ‘illegal’ sites. BREIN threatened to take these payment providers to court if they refused to cooperate, and it now appears that they were serious. Read more...