Illegal Dutch website offline after BREIN action

Anti-piracy group submits damages claim against hosting provider

Amsterdam, 23rd November 2006

Extremepowertorrents.nl, an illegal music website in the Netherlands, was issued with a cease and desist letter by Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN this week.

Both the website and its hosting provider had been previously summoned by BREIN. The website did not respond and the hosting provider denied its legal obligation to cooperate with suspending the infringing site and identifying its client.

This week BREIN visited the hosting provider to demand the immediate termination of the website and disclosure of the identity details of its operator. This resulted in a cease and desist letter from the hosting provider to its client that led to the website going offline on Tuesday.

The identity details provided by the hosting provider corresponded with a domain name registration that BREIN had earlier determined was fake. As the hosting provider was informed of this fact six weeks earlier by BREIN and knowingly continued to host the illegal website, BREIN is demanding a damages claim from the company that has been estimated at least €280,000.

Extremepowertorrents.nl offered 1,500 verified torrentlinks to music, film, games and other copyrighted works. The site had approximately 20,000 registered users and was created as a reaction to an earlier BREIN action against the illegal bittorrent website NLExperience.

In these cases BREIN demands immediate cessation of the illegal activities and the personal details of the site operators. Providers and site operators are held liable for the infringements.

ISPs and operators that do not comply with such demands are being summoned. In addition to immediate cessation BREIN demands an anti-piracy undertaking with a penalty sum, an account of the operators of the site and damages for which all involved are liable. These damages quickly run up to hundreds of thousands of euros or more.

If hosting providers knowingly and willingly continue to host illegal sites they also can be held liable for damages.

Tim Kuik, managing director of BREIN, says: "Many pirate websites are hosted at shady hosting providers who are not very precise about complying with the law - they run a heavy risk."

Criminal action is also possible. Several arrests have been made in earlier criminal actions against illegal P2P sites.

For further information please contact:
Tim Kuik
Tim.Kuik@anti-piracy.nl
+31 (23) 799 7999