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The Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN is one of the most active civil copyright enforcement groups in the world. This week, the group announced its 2020 accomplishments, which include shutting down hundreds of pirate sites and services, dozens of settlements, and a local blockade of Pirate Bay.
Regarding the application of civil law against piracy, BRAIN is without a doubt one of the most recognized players in the industry.
The group, which receives support from Hollywood and other content industries, has shuttered hundreds of smaller sites and services in recent history. He was also responsible for taking down Mininova, which was once one of the largest torrent sites online.
Despite the COVID pandemic, BREIN continued these compliance actions in 2020. The group has just released a detailed description of last year's achievements, which provides a clear view of the group's anti-piracy priorities.
BREIN dealt with 466 pirated sites and services
Looking at the numbers, we see that the anti-piracy group has closed the books on a fairly productive year. In total, it completed 479 investigations that resulted in the closure of 466 illegal sites and services.
These targets include torrenting and streaming sites, but also open directories, Facebook Groupsand sellers of illegal IPTV subscriptions. In addition, more than a million links to pirate sites were removed from third-party search engines such as Google.
BREIN often begins its investigations based on references from copyright holders. Interestingly, some references point to scam sites. These are Fake pirate sites that try to fool people in the delivery of credit card details or other information.
In 2020, BREIN received 154 of these tips from copyright holders. The sites do not offer pirated content, so there is no action required by BREIN. However, the group was kind enough to report them to ScamAdviser.com, so that people can avoid these pitfalls in the future.
Pirate Bay Dynamic Lock
One of the most outstanding achievements is the Pirate Bay Lockdown. After a legal battle of more than ten years, the court ruled that Dutch ISPs must block access to the torrent site and all proxies that appear.
This "dynamic" blocking order allows BREIN to add any new IP address and domain name that may appear online. It doesn't just apply to the main Pirate Bay site. In total, 180 proxies and mirrors were added to the block list.
According to BREIN, this measure resulted in a significant decrease in visitors to Dutch Pirate Bay. The group hopes to extend its reach in the near future, requesting more blocking orders from the court.
โBlocking access to the illegal bittorrent site The Pirate Bay has led to a drop of more than 95% in Dutch visitors. Now that it has finally been granted by the Dutch courts in 2020, BREIN is also focusing on getting other popular illegal sites blocked, โnotes BREIN.
In addition to these measures, the anti-piracy group also took direct action against the operator of the proxy site provider Piratebay-proxylist.net, which had millions of monthly visitors. BREIN took over the domain and the operator agreed pay 280,000 euros in compensation.
Agreements, warnings and possible prosecutions
Like every year, BREIN also goes after users who upload videos and others who make pirated content available. Just last week, he announced a deal with a large-scale uploader of Dutch comics, which was traced through open source intelligence.
In 2020, the group signed a total of 42 deals with copyright infringers, and efforts will continue to address other major shippers.
BREIN also started warning large-scale torrent uploaders. The group is I'm not interested in casual piratesBut track down the big shot and ask ISPs to send a warning to these subscribers.
This warning campaign is still in an early stage, but BREIN expects it to have a significant long-term impact.
Finally, BREIN also hints at possible criminal proceedings. Generally speaking, copyright infringement is not a priority for Dutch law enforcement. However, that can change when there is an annual turnover of 100,000 euros or when there is an organizational layer involved.
The Netherlands Tax Information and Investigation Service (FIOD) is currently processing a case referred by BREIN, and further referrals are pending.
