AMSTERDAM — Action taken by Dutch anti-piracy organization Brein, along with the country’s fiscal intelligence and investigation service FIOD-ECD, resulted in the closure of two servers suspected of offering links to alleged infringing material.
Brein’s investigators tipped the FIOD-ECD that the Dutch-based servers — ShareConnector.com and Releases4U.com — provided access to thousands of files, including music, games and films. They offered links to P2P users utilizing the eDonkey network.
The FIOD-ECD raided nine locations Dec. 14 and confiscated documents and computers, including four servers.
The Dutch fiscal police also arrested eight people suspected of offering links to illegal copies of entertainment and other content. According to sources close to the case, some of these individuals are also suspected of belonging to the DVD Europe Team, an organization that aims to make films available online.
Brein director Tim Kuik is convinced the arrests will result in convictions.
“The content and quality of these files had been verified by the sites, and there is no doubt that making these files available was illegal,” says Kuik. “Besides that, these sites place illegal files on the eDonkey network themselves.”
Brein is understood to be planning to press charges against Dutch provider Mindlab, which hosted the two sites.
Several lawyers have expressed doubts to ELW that the case has merit. Lex Bruinhofof Amsterdam-based Wieringa Advokaten claims that existing law says linking is illegal only when the servers give access to illegal sites or files, and that the prosecution will have to prove this is the case.
Last May, Brein lost a similar case when it tried to sue an MP3 search site.
