Mininova closes part of the site that offers infringing content

Miniova is one of the hundred most visited sites in the world. It has decided to close down the part of the site on which infringing content is offered. A Dutch court ordered Mininova three months ago to remove torrents that link to copyrighted works. The site has now responded by choosing to close down the part of the site that was mostly used to share copyrighted works completely.

The site had more than 50 million unique users every day that generated over 800 million pageviews. It listed over 1,3 million trackers, the vast majority of which linked to copyrighted works.

“Sites that structurally abuse copyright have a choice between filtering or closing,” says BREIN director Tim Kuik. It was expected that Mininova would choose to close. As the majority of visitors came expressly for the infringing content, those visitors would not return if the content could no longer be accessed. Filtering is a huge task. Mininova received around 3000 new links every day. “Therefore, it was important to BREIN that the judge ruled that it was the responsibility of Mininova to keep away illegal links up front. If BREIN would have to take care of this afterwards, that would be undoable. It is easier for Mininova to oversee this.”

Mininova does continue with its site that offers featured content, content that is placed with the approval of rights holders.