Usenet User to Pay Roughly $5,700 for Copyright Infringement

BREIN damages

BREIN efforts are aimed at the “art of protecting the creative” and have won several cases in court in the past against a wide range of online pirates acting over Facebook and YouTube, but their main targets are torrent users and infringing Usenet uploaders. Back in 2009, News-Service Europe (NSE) was one of the biggest Usenet providers, but that didn’t contribute a bit to the case it ended up losing in court against the anti-piracy group over copyright content. BREIN’s desires were that the Usenet provider deleted all infringing content, and to the rejoice of the group the court ordered precisely that. In 2011 NSE would cease all operations, but the case is far from being settled since last year the Amsterdam court of appeals ruled in favor of the Usenet provider, which then led BREIN to take the case to the last defense: the Supreme Court.

Regarding this more recent case, in the beginning Eweka refused to hand in its user’s details, claiming that it was a neutral intermediary and would not serve as a piracy police. But after discussion in court, this same entity then decided otherwise, claiming that in cases of copyright infringement Usenet providers must hand over the requested information of their users. The decision didn’t have much to be argued with, especially if we consider that the same has happened with ISPs: according to Dutch law, these organizations can be forced to give the court the personal details of their customers. As such BREIN managed to get the details of the Eweka user and the two parties agreed on a fine, which includes an added €2,000 ($2,379) per day in case ‘Badfan69′ uploads any more infringing content, up to a maximum of €50,000 ($59.482).

The legality of Usenet

The moment you start accessing copyrighted files, of which free sharing is forbidden, then you become an online pirate and you’ll be chased and most likely caught by entities similar to BREIN in the Netherlands, which will resort to the courts to force companies into handing over your details. Although this case ended up in a monetary fine, different countries have different laws and some can even sentence you to heavier penalties for this, even including time in jail. The moral of the story is this: don’t mess with copyright content anywhere.