BREIN orders takedown of illegal Australian TV torrentsite

Dutch anti-piracy foundation BREIN requested the takedown of torrentsite Diwana.org on the grounds of copyright infringement with regard to several Australian TV series. Diwana.org offered downloads of Australian shows such as The Slap, Wild Boys and Packed to the Rafters without consent of the producers. Hosting provider LeaseWeb ultimately took the site down upon request of BREIN.

Diwana.org’s Australian administrator stated that he launched the site only to give Australians outside of Australia the opportunity to watch TV shows that are not available elsewhere. According to Tim Kuik, director of BREIN, that is irrelevant. It is up to the content owners to decide if their content may be made available online. Also, it may very well be that the rights holders of these TV series are in the process of negotiating a licensing deal to air the show in other countries and that the torrentsite jeopardises such talks, explains Tim Kuik to Webwereld. For instance, the BBC is currently broadcasting older episodes of The Slap.

LeaseWeb is a member of the Dutch Notice and Takedown Working Group, of which many Dutch ISPs are a member. The working group, a cooperation between the government, industry and interest groups, came up with a joined Notice and Takedown Code of Conduct, that seems to be used in this case to takedown Diwala.org. The Notice and Takedown procedure led to the following steps: Leaseweb received BREIN’s notice of illegal content on Diwana.org. After examining the notice, Leaseweb agreed that there was unlawful content on the torrentsite and forwarded BREIN’s demand to take down the site to Diwana.org’s administrator. Diwana’s administrator, however, did not respond within 24 hours. Subsequently, Leaseweb took the site down (Article 6 sub b Notice and Takedown Code of Conduct).

Read more about this subject on FutureofCopyright.com:

• Court hearing BREIN and ISPs Ziggo/XS4ALL: obliged to block The Pirate Bay?
• BREIN wins lawsuit against major European Usenet Provider
• Dutch BREIN foundation counts on payment providers to tackle illegal file sharing sites

Reference: Webwereld

By: Karen Groen