“Large Scale” Music Pirate Settles With BREIN For 10,000 Euros

[steven36]

A pirate who uploaded large volumes of music to the Internet without permission has agreed to pay Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN 10,000 euros ($12,374) to avoid a lawsuit. Although the individual uploaded the content to the newsgroups, which are sometimes considered to be more secure, BREIN forced his Usenet provider to hand over his details, making it easy to track him down.

 

 

In 2018, music piracy is a very different beast than it was back in the early P2P days of Kazaa and LimeWire.

 

 

Where once it ran rampant, vastly improved official offerings have ensured that millions of former pirates are now enjoying music legally via convenient streaming services such as Spotify. However, there is no shortage of people who prefer to have personal archives of illicit MP3s stored safely on their own machines.

 

This content can be easily obtained from web-based pirate sites, torrent platforms, and the aging Usenet system. The latter is often (and incorrectly) considered to be a safer option for distribution but for one uploader, things haven’t played out that way.

 

According to news from Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, a “large-scale” Usenet uploader has recently agreed to pay the not inconsiderable sum of 10,000 euros ($12,374) to make a potential lawsuit disappear.

 

BREIN says the person was responsible for uploading unlicensed music releases to Usenet in breach of copyright, including recent albums by Ed Sheeran and Justin Timberlake. However, BREIN also criticizes the Usenet providers who facilitate this kind of sharing.

 

“Although such uploaders usually do this free of charge for the status they receive from illegal downloaders, it is the Usenet providers that make money by selling subscriptions for access to their servers,” says BREIN director Tim Kuik.

 

“Such providers like to close their eyes and claim that they do not know what is happening on their servers and only take action when they receive a notification.”

 

Alongside BREIN’s suggestion of willful blindness to infringement, there’s also the issue of compliance when Usenet operators are presented with an official complaint. Dutch case law requires that when a “reasonable” case of infringement is presented, they must give up the identity of the alleged infringer. In this case, that’s exactly what happened.

 

“BREIN has, in order to obtain the details the uploader, requested the Usenet provider of this uploader to provide the data. This request was answered,” the anti-piracy outfit reveals.

 

Unlike other jurisdictions where a specific court order is needed for disclosure, in the Netherlands no such process is required. BREIN has taken advantage of this position in many previous cases, insisting that providers who don’t disclose when there are reasonable grounds are acting unlawfully.

 

Following BREIN’s approach and the 10,000 euro settlement, the anti-piracy outfit says that the uploader took to Spotnet, a piece of software that allows downloading from newsgroups, to announce his demise.

 

“As you may have noticed, I have not been actively uploading for a while, because BREIN finally found my details and I have been asked to stop acting as an uploader of copyrighted music content to Usenet,” the uploader wrote.

 

“I have made a settlement with BREIN. A part of this settlement consists of the payment of a considerable sum of 10,000 euros, so I stop with uploading and advise other uploaders to think carefully about whether they want to continue. BREIN doesn’t stand idly by either. They are willing to take the necessary steps to get your details.”

 

BREIN says that the circumstances of the uploader were taken into consideration when reaching the 10,000 euro figure but whether the full amount will ever get paid will never be publicly known. That being said, the publicity attached to the settlement agreement will be worth more to BREIN than the cash alone.

 

Source

[Skunk1966]

unfortunately this is about someone I know and it just shows how careful uploaders in the Netherlands have to be nowadays

[JimmySvert]

On 3/9/2018 at 7:04 PM, Skunk1966 said:

unfortunately this is about someone I know and it just shows how careful uploaders in the Netherlands have to be nowadays

 

Strange that usenet ain't that safe anymore, despite the fact that is mostly used by advanced userswho know or have experience on properly configuring a usenet setup (newsreader, usenet account, places to get nzb etc).
 

[Skunk1966]

25 minutes ago, JimmySvert said:

 

Strange that usenet ain't that safe anymore, despite the fact that is mostly used by advanced userswho know or have experience on properly configuring a usenet setup (newsreader, usenet account, places to get nzb etc).
 

we have this club named BREIN who represent de entertainment industry and is funded by them. They were given the right by court to ask usenet providers for names and other account credentials of uploaders and providers are forced to give that information without a court ruling. This person had an account at Eweka and Eweka is logging everything. If you want to upload safely look for a provider that isn't logging activity, allows anonimous usernames, allows payment by Bitcoin or anonymous creditcard (for sale at gasstations etc.) and isn't located in the Netherlands. Also use a good VPN that doen't keep logs.

To be anonymous and safe on usenet you need more than the above only but I won't get into that

If you don't start off correctly you eventually will get caught if you're a big uploader

[Guest maut]

@Skunk1966 The main reason I use ProtonVPN 

[gingerbread80]

I thought usenet providers did not track or keep logs.

[Skunk1966]

19 hours ago, gingerbread80 said:

I thought usenet providers did not track or keep logs.

all of them keep logs + ip adresses, names etc.

As an uploader you have to start looking for usenet providers that accept anonymous creditcards and fake names, are outside the area where BREIN or other groups like it don't have any influence, work with good vpn and lots more just to make sure you can't be found

[steven36]

20 hours ago, gingerbread80 said:

I thought usenet providers did not track or keep logs.

It don't pay to think most services,  that sell  something to do with uploading or downloading have it in writing  that  they will comply with law enforcement  or  anti piracy .     they not decentralized , unless you pay with bitcion   or prepaid credit card, or sent them a money order by snail mail , they would always have you're billing address .   In the Netherlands no court order is needed like  it is in the USA and if they don't comply with BREIN  they would get  there service shutdown.  

 

Back when KAT was going before the USA Govt shut it down many Dutch uploaders on that site got busted . Most likely the FBI was tipping off BREIN the whole time . Always use a VPN  for uploading .  The only thing that stands in the way of many around the world,  being busted for uploading the ones that  do it for cash rewards on hosters,   is the fact that in most places they need a court order and  it would cost too much money  to build a case against each one . If you take  cash rewards from UL , RG , OL  , CU,  and the list goes on and on,  you have to give them  somewhere to send it and cases like these shows,  if they ever decided  to go after you,  that most likely you would be going to jail, in the USA  they put people in jail for 3 or 4 years for taking money for uploading .  In the UK you could get up to 10 years in jail  and they don't care if you took money or not.  In the USA  they been fining people for uploading since the days of napster  , They still do sometimes  , but not very much because these anti piracy trolls lose a lot  in court, so they started going after the  ISPs .

 

See a lot of  sites use Usenet as a source to  download things they never have issues yet because they upload it somewhere else .   What will be interesting will be to see if  the EU passes uploading filters  in a few days to stop files from ever getting  uploaded to services to begin with.  things don't look good. Time to start sharing over p2p inside our clients again with a vpn  if files don't get uploaded to hosters.