Usenet provider News-Service Europe ends activities
Late September, Dutch anti-piracy organisation BREIN, won a proceedings on the merits against News-Service Europe (NSE), one of the largest UseNet providers in Europe. Following the lost trial and the execution of the court ruling, NSE has now stopped its activities immediately.
To execute the court ruling, the Usenet provider was required to remove all illegal, copyright infringing files and keep them removed. In case NSE would not execute the court ruling, the provider would forfeit a fine of € 50,000 per day. Two weeks ago as a final attempt, NSE started interim proceedings to prevail execution of the ruling, but in vain, as the judge did not rule in favour of NSE. Therefore NSE is still obliged to execute the court ruling. The Usenet provider points out on its website that it can neither remove all infringing content nor keep it removed and therefore is not able to execute the ruling. According to NSE, this leaves them with no other option than to entirely stop their activities.
With respect to the proceedings on the merits, the Dutch district court of Amsterdam decided NSE ‘knowingly facilitates’ publication of copyright protected files by other Usenet providers and is therefore responsible for the copyright infringements through its platform. NSE defended by stating that they are merely storing files for a short while, so the files can be offered to other Usenet providers. In practice however, users share files, which include copyright infringing material and according to the court users share these files on a large scale. In addition, the court ruled NSE itself also contributed to the further distribution of the infringing files.
As a matter of principle, NSE is going to appeal the ruling of the district court of Amsterdam.
Read more about BREIN and providers on FutureofCopyright.com:
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