Original article (translated)
nvestigation agency FIOD (FIOD-ECD, tax and economic crimes police) closes large edonkey sites
Tuesday, december 14th 2004 - After complaints from Brein, the FIOD has seized the server that run the edonkey sites Releases4u and Shareconnector.
Tuesday morning the fiscal investigation agency FIOD-ECD seized 4 servers in Rotterdam that hosted the 2 biggest edonkey sites in Holland, Brein has declared. In 9 places a total of 8 people were arrested and 11 computers were seized.
Releases4U and ShareConnector offered links to illegal files that were checked for content and quality, especially the latest movies, games, music and other content. Brein had been talking with the people behind these sites for a while now, but these talks yielded no results. "Our patience was up, after which we went to the authorities", says Tim Kuik, director of Brein. According to him this is the first in a series of moves against "services that play an essential role in the exchange of illegal files".
These files aren't offered from the abovementioned sites itselfm but are hosted on the computers of the users of p2p service edonkey. "Illegal files in good quality are often hard to find", says Brein.
"Not Illegal"
The 8 persons were arrested for suspicion of committing copyright infringement and accessory to that crime.
SC and R4U offered about 10.000 links to illegal files for about 50.000 registered users, and a multitude of that of consumers. The people behind the sites told Webwereld a while ago that there is nothing illegal about so called ed2k links.
The hostingprovider of the 2 sites, Mindlab, earlier refused to take down the 2 sites. "As long as offering these links is not a crime, we will let them run their sites", Zefanja Nafzger declared to Webwereld earlier.
Millions in damages
The damage of this kind of illegal practice can reach significant amounts, Kuik says. He points out that the owner of the site Film88.com recently was convicted to paying $23,8 million in damages. Brein will hold not only SC and R4U responsible for the damages, but also Mindlab, the provider. Kuik estimates the damages sought to be "several millions (of Euros)".
Besides that the OM (prosucutor's office) is likely to start a criminal procedure against the site owners. The maximum penalty is 4 years in prison, according to Kuik.
Kuik says that services like SC and R4U hide behind "false reasoning that illegal files are actually hosted on different servers and that the actual exchange doesn't take place on their own servers". "However, it is clear they are the ones responsible for the illegal spreading of these files", Brein concludes.