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The Dutch private torrent tracker scene has been decimated by BREIN. The anti-piracy group tracked down a man who coded and maintained the scripts used by these sites. The same person also arranged hosting and sold seedboxes and VPN services. Meanwhile, actions against other people involved continue.
Streaming piracy has taken over BitTorrent in most parts of the world, but this traditional file-sharing technology is still popular in the Netherlands.
The anti-piracy group BREIN is well aware of the popularity of BitTorrent. In addition to targeting public torrent sites with site-blocking measures, BREIN has also been on the lookout for private torrent trackers.
BREIN lens script
This week, BRAIN reports that action against the latter led to a breakthrough last year, eventually leading to the decimation of the entire local 'private' torrent tracker scene. The anti-piracy group says the identification of a key person with connections to 25 private torrent trackers led to the current situation that most are offline.
The anonymous man, who personally owned some of the trackers, coded and maintained the scripts on which these sites ran. In addition to coding work, the developer also offered hosting services, seedboxes, and VPN accounts to torrent sites and their users.
BREIN does not mention any of the private trackers by name. However, around the same time that this enforcement action was shut down, several of the largest Dutch-language torrent communities went offline. Those include Filmpaleis on Ebookparadijs, with the former publicly mentioning BREIN as the reason.
Shortly after receiving a house call from BREIN, the developer of the torrent tracker signed an agreement to stop its activities, with a maximum fine of โฌ50,000 for breach of promise. This week, the man further agreed to pay โฌ12,000 in 'damages', payable in installments.
Approaching Prive Trackers
Private torrent trackers are typically much smaller than their public counterparts, but can accommodate some of the most active users. These people are drawn to trackers because of the superior download speeds and the absence of spam and viruses, BREIN notes.
BREIN director Tim Kuik is pleased with these latest achievements. In recent years, the group has carried out many enforcement actions to cripple the Dutch Usenet community, and plans to do the same with Dutch torrent trackers.
โOur approach to Dutch private trackers is an extension of our approach to Usenet indexing sites, which has already dealt a major blow to illegal users and communities. We want to achieve the same in the illegal BitTorrent scene,โ says Kuik.
BREIN highlights that its investigation has already resulted in actions against other players in the ecosystem, without elaborating at this stage. It is likely that these actions are directed at the management of trackers. The anti-piracy group confirms that it typically goes after the biggest fish, noting that this also includes prolific video uploaders.
