In another anti-piracy case in foreign news this week, anti-piracy group BREIN tried to convice a Dutch court that a usenet group (FTD) that publishes the locations of where copyrighted materials can be (illegally) downloaded is equivalent to publishing the material itself.
Torrent Freak reports:
… Lawyer Gijsbert Brunt began by outlining how FTD operates. He argued that FTD allows users to report or ‘spot’ where material may be found on Usenet, but does nothing more than this, adding that FTD does not upload any content to users, nor does it offer users any downloads.
Brunt further argued that FTD’s service is not even necessary to download content from Usenet and is not, as BREIN claims, an “entertainment shopping” service from where movies can be downloaded.
As part of their argument, BREIN referred to an earlier legal battle between FTD and the movie studio, Eyeworks.
In that case, a court ruled that by allowing the publication of ‘spots’ detailing the location of an unauthorized movie stored on Usenet, FTD effectively became the publisher of that movie as if they had actually hosted it on their own servers.
Read more on TorrentFreak. Telecompaper reports that BREIN used “undercover” usenet posters as part of its investigation.