A Dutch judge in Utrecht has given Mininova three months to remove all links that infringe copyrighted content.
The Dutch Court in Utrecht District sided with Stichting Brein, a Dutch based organisation funded by copyright holder groups. Unlike Pirate Bay, Mininova was already removing files when it received a take-down notice from copyright holders.
The case is also important because, with last year’s death of TorrentSpy, there are no United States-based torrent trackers even though the U.S. courts have never ruled squarely on the merits whether hosting a BitTorrent tracker or index is unlawful.
Another torrent site in the hit list is Canadian based IsoHunt, being sued by the Motion Picture Association of America in a Los Angeles federal court. That case has been pending nearly three years. Ishohunt, another popular alternative to the The Pirate Bay, removes several hundred listings from its BitTorrent index each week upon requests from copyright owners.
Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer said in an e-mailed statement to Threat Level that the site’s operators were surprised by the decision, given that Mininova removes content upon request.
Tags: copyright groups, dutch court, isohunt, mininova, pirate bay