Highlights of the press release:
- News-Service Europe (NSE) is selling access – via resellers such as NewsXS – to hundreds of thousands of files called binaries. Between 80 and 90 percent of these binary files relates to pirated content. These files can oftentimes be located via Usenet indexing services such as FTD.
- BREIN Managing Director Tim Kuik: This verdict is a breakthrough and affects the second pillar of Usenet, the providers. The first one being the indexers and the third and last one, the resellers.
- The judge argued that NSE is aware that the binaries contain pirated files, makes relevant facilitative and operational decisions and is making money off of this through contracts with resellers.
- Notice and Takedown doesn’t do much because by the time a content owner knows what’s going on, the content has already been shared with other Usenet providers.
- The statement that NSE is unable to filter the pirated content is not in conflict with a ban on distribution of such content. According to the judge it’s the impact and volume of the infringements that justifies a ban.
- NSE has 4 weeks to comply and can decide to discuss filtering options with BREIN. The judgment does not target the distribution of the brief news articles the Usenet was developed for originally. BREIN does not want to take down Usenet but wants the large scale copyright infringement to stop.
Dutch language news article:
Press release in Dutch:
