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Mininova Deletes All Infringing Torrents and Goes ‘Legal’

Bob2002

ULTIMATE Member
Mininova, the largest torrent site on the Internet, has removed all torrents except those that were uploaded through its content distribution service. Mininova’s founders took the drastic decision after they lost a civil dispute against Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN, and were ordered to remove all infringing torrents from the site.

Mininova’s decision to delete all infringing torrents from its index marks the end of an era that started five years ago.

In December 2004, the demise of the mighty Suprnova left a meteor crater in the fledgling BitTorrent landscape. This gaping hole was soon filled by the dozens of new sites that emerged to fulfil the public’s increasing demands for torrents. Mininova became the most successful of all.

Mininova was founded in early 2005 by five Dutch students, just a month after Suprnova closed its doors. The site started out as a hobby project created by tech-savvy teenagers, but in the years that followed the site’s founders managed to turn it into a successful business that generated millions of dollars in revenue.

With increased popularity also came numerous complaints from copyright holders, who saw their intellectual property being shared by users of the site. For years Mininova has complied with these takedown requests, but earlier this year the Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN decided to take the torrent site to court nonetheless, demanding that the operators proactively filter torrents pointing to copyrighted material.

The case went to court in June and a few weeks later the verdict was announced. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringements, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.

To avoid having to pay these penalties, the Mininova team saw no other option than to disable access to all torrents except those that were uploaded to their content distribution platform. This means that only approved uploaders can share torrents through the site for now.

Rest of article ...

I'm always surprised these types of sites last as long as they do. :hrmph:
 
Indeed I expected the big BitTorrent trackers like this to vanish much sooner, leaving behind a minefield of smaller sites. They really were just mass collections of illegal bt links that like it or not are now no longer tolerated by most countries.
 
Last edited:
Newzbin is also facing legal action, for anybody hoping newsgroup users would be left alone. :shrug:
 
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Taking down Kazaa was supposed to be a "victory".

Taking down the major eDonkey servers and (the original) ShareReactor was supposed to be a "victory".

Taking down (the original) Suprnova was supposed to be a "major victory".

Illegal file sharing is as popular now as it has ever been. :shrug: I can think of at least half a dozen methods of sharing files, just waiting to take over, should people decide to stop using Torrents.
 
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