Mininova ordered to scrub database of illegal torrents

In its stupid and relentless march to control the digital availability of video and music the entertainment industry trade groups and other organizations have won another battle with Dutch judge ordering that Mininova, one of the world’s largest torrent search engines, remove all infringing torrents. In the judge’s opinion Mininova may not be directly responsible for any copyright infringement but they are not doing enough to protect the rights of copyright holders.

Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN, a European entertainment industry trade organization, claims that it isn’t its intention to shut Mininova down. Instead it wants is to have all existing illegal torrents removed and the implementing of an improved filtering system along with digital fingerprints that would allow rights holders to protect their content.

The judge in their finding that Mininova isn’t doing enough to to protect rights holders has given Mininova three months to remove that content, or pay a penalty of €1,000 per infringing torrent to a maximum of 5 million Euros ($7 million). The court reasoned that Mininova already had a proactive team of moderators who dealt with removing adult content, viruses and fake files and therefore had systems in place that could deal with such copyrighted material.

According to the team over at TorrentFreak the co-founder, Erik Dubbelboer, of Mininova is considering appealing the decision.

Mininova co-founder Erik Dubbelboer said in a response: “We are obviously not happy with the verdict.” Mininova is considering to appeal the decision, which they have to do within three months