In 2004, the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN took down the once large ed2K link site ShareConnector, which had aided in finding files (or parts of files) on the eDonkey2000 network with software such as eMule.
The site came back in 2006 but in 2007, the admin Adi was taken to trial and acquitted of any complicity to criminal copyright infringement. After that, the site went down and now remains as a host for eDonkey and other tutorials.
Interestingly today however, Adi added a blog post saying that BREIN is back to appeal the 2007 case, and a court case is upcoming.
Says the post:
Recently, I got a letter from the Department of Justice, stating that they want a re-trial which they desperately lost back in July 24 2007.
I’m really surprised that they want another shot at trying to make us look as criminals. Nobody expected the DoJ to go for an appeal after an embarrassing defeat 2 years ago.
The defendants are to appear proforma on 22 September 2009 in The Hague. On 18 November 2009 the re-trial should take place. Both ShareConnector and Releases4u (dutch ed2k site we are not affiliated with but was hosted on our ISP) including the former ShareConnector host are to appear in court.
This has nothing to do with the recent civil case against BREIN, where I went for an appeal. That appeal should take place within a few months as well.
So this year is really packed with lawsuits for me with hopefully some conclusive results about the legality of eD2k indexing sites in the Netherlands. After the illegal raids by FIOD-ECD who didn’t do any research and blindly followed BREIN back in December 2004, it took years with the criminal court which made so many blunders and now finally this chapter can be closed with the DoJ and civil appeal approaching us.
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Result for: court case
Project Playlist, the social networking site that allows users to create and share music playlists, has announced EMI has signed onto the project, making it the second of the “Big 4″ to do so. (Sony/BMG made a similar deal last year)
The site currently has over 42 million users and the new deal is made more important by the fact that EMI was a plaintiff in a lawsuit filed last year against the site. The remaining parties in the suit are other Big 4 labels Warner Music and Universal Music Group.
Warner and Universal said they intend to continue the court case, which also includes the RIAA and 9 other record labels. Project Playlist, for its part, says they pay royalties to songwriters, publishers and artists.
Project Playlist has increased in popularity mainly for its great music streaming ability as well as the fact that it works in every country with no restrictions. Also notably, PP lets you embed the player in most blogs or Web sites, with the exception of MySpace and Facebook.
Result for: court case
After having access to their site blocked in February, the infamous torrent tracker The Pirate Bay is fighting back against the group that forced the block, threatening to sue the music industry lobby group The International Federation of the Phonographic Industry (IFPI) for monetary damages.
In February the IFPI accused the Danish ISP Tele2 of “aiding and abetting copyright infringement” and went to court to get the ISP to block access to the torrent tracker.
One of TPB’s admins, Brokep, wrote in the official blog that the site would be seeking monetary damages for the access block if Tele2 wins its court appeal. The site remains DNS blocked until the court case is resolved. The block, in all its irony, has had a reverse effect. The Pirate Bay has jumped up 5 spots in Denmark’s most popular sites traffic-wise, thanks mainly to all the media publicity surrounding the court case and the site.
If forced to sue the IFPI, Brokep says the money will go to setting up a fund to help aspiring Danish artists. “We will demand an amount of cash that we feel will be reasonable (Not counting like Ifpi themselves, we actually understand economy a bit more…).”
Two weeks ago TPB was in the news again, this time being sued for over $2.5 million USD by the IFPI whom accused them of sharing 24 albums, nine films and four games.
