Mininova Goes Legit, Shuts Down Platform
You might remember that anti-piracy group BREIN took popular torrent site Mininova to court this summer. The anti-piracy outfit demanded that Mininova filter out copyright infringing torrents. BREIN’s legal representation argued that Mininova should remove torrents that link to unauthorized content (copyright infringing content) and that an automated system of doing so should be implemented – at Mininova’s expense.
Mininova’s legal representation argued that the site has a “notice and takedown” policy in place, that the site has never operated in the wrong side of the law and that there is a strong relation between Mininova and other organizations of rights holders. Mininova’s defenders also argued that a technology to filter out copyright infringing torrents has already been implemented. But the Dutch Court of Utrecht couldn’t care less and ruled that the BitTorrent Mininova platform acts unlawful.
To comply with the court’s ruling, popular torrent site Mininova is limiting Mininova.org to it Content Distribution service only. Thanks to the Content Distribution service, artists and producers can publish and distribute their content free of charge via Mininova.
“Unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the Content Distribution service. According to the verdict we have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. We’ve been testing some filtering systems the last couple of months, but we found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, we decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. We are still considering an appeal at this moment,” announced the Mininova staff.
What will you do now that Mininova has succumbed to anti-piracy outfit BREIN and has taken its platform offline? There are alternatives. TorrentFreak has compiled a list of 10 Mininova alternatives that you can view here. DownloadSquad has also compiled a list of 7 Mininova alternatives – view here.
Mininova’s legal representation argued that the site has a “notice and takedown” policy in place, that the site has never operated in the wrong side of the law and that there is a strong relation between Mininova and other organizations of rights holders. Mininova’s defenders also argued that a technology to filter out copyright infringing torrents has already been implemented. But the Dutch Court of Utrecht couldn’t care less and ruled that the BitTorrent Mininova platform acts unlawful.
To comply with the court’s ruling, popular torrent site Mininova is limiting Mininova.org to it Content Distribution service only. Thanks to the Content Distribution service, artists and producers can publish and distribute their content free of charge via Mininova.
“Unfortunately the court ruling leaves us no other option than to take our platform offline, except for the Content Distribution service. According to the verdict we have to prevent uploads of torrents to Mininova that refer to certain titles or to similar-looking titles. We’ve been testing some filtering systems the last couple of months, but we found that it’s neither technically nor operationally possible to implement a 100% working filter system. Therefore, we decided that the only option is to limit Mininova to Content Distribution torrents from now on. We are still considering an appeal at this moment,” announced the Mininova staff.
What will you do now that Mininova has succumbed to anti-piracy outfit BREIN and has taken its platform offline? There are alternatives. TorrentFreak has compiled a list of 10 Mininova alternatives that you can view here. DownloadSquad has also compiled a list of 7 Mininova alternatives – view here.
