Appeal against Dutch p2p-sites to start after two years

The public prosecutor has, after two years of silence, summoned seven administrators of p2p-sites Shareconnector.com and Releases4U.com in the appeal of the first Dutch p2p case in a criminal court. The sites for which the defendants are held responsible link to files on the eDonkey network, most of which have been uploaded illegally.

In the summer of 2007, the judge cleared the defendants of the most important charges. However, the judge did rule that such sites are illegal because administrators “are accomplishes to users that violate copyright in this manner.” In spite of a thorough investigation by the public prosecutor in cooperation with the tax office and BREIN into violations by other users, the court could not consider it proven that the defendants were guilty as accomplishes.

The prosectuors directly filed for appeal and remained silent for two years after that. The appeal serves in the court of The Hague on November 18th.

In the meantime, BREIN did win a lawsuit against Shareconnector.com. This site has now been banned, pending appeal.

The administrators had taken both site offline before the trial served.