Mininova Threatened With $1500 Fine For Each Link To an Illegal Torrent

[froggyboy604]

Hugely popular torrent indexer Mininova has been slapped with a debilitating ruling, in the Netherlands: Within the next three months, the site has to remove all links to infringing torrents, after which it'll be fined 1000 Euros for each one.

Mininova's been working on a copyright filter for a while, but with the stakes so artificially high, it would need to be almost perfect to make operating the site worthwhile. This means that Mininova will either A.) Become the premier torrent indexer for Linux ISOs and public domain FLAC music, or B.) die.*

With two major torrent sites all but snuffed out in the last few weeks, there are only a few decent alternatives left. Although if you're of a hardier type, there's always Usenet. [Torrentfreak]


Gizmodo

The fines are expensive. I guest it is easier to go after a website then the users.

[Skeithex]

The fines are expensive. I guest it is easier to go after a website then the users.

that's how it is done frog, though the website had to expect this kind of thing.

[froggyboy604]

I guest pretty soon the entertainment industry go after the developers of the software. If you think about it Mininova is just a bittorrent tracker that doesn't host any pirated files all it does is hosts links to files.

It be kind of weird for the ent. industry to sue the inventers of HTML for making it possible for people to make websites to share files.

I wonder if Mininova can sue their ISP or web hosting company for not protecting the identity of the owner if it is a private registration.