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Mininova deletes illegal torrents, steps to the straight and narrow

Mininova was the largest BitTorrent tracker in the world, but after losing a lawsuit its founders have been forced to stop guiding users to illegally hosted, copyrighted material.

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Computing | by Samuel Axon | Fri Nov 27, 2009 2:27PM | 0 comments

Five-year-old BitTorrent website Mininova has deleted all torrents not uploaded through its carefully controlled, completely legal content distrubition service. That means one of the world's largest repositories of pirated music, video, and software is now legit. Only registered content distribution service members can upload torrents to Mininova now.

This happened after the founders lost a civil dispute to Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN, which took them to court despite their compliance with takedown requests. BREIN demanded that Mininova filter torrents to make sure they don't infringe on copyrights before they can be uploaded. The judge determined that this was a reasonable request, and told Mininova that it should comply within three months or face five million euros in fines.

Mininova's founders haven't figured out whether or not they will appeal the judge's decision yet.

This story around the web:

Trusted sources:
external link Mininova Deletes All Infringing Torrents and… [TorrentFreak]
external link Mininova Deletes All Infringing Torrents and… [Techmeme]
external link The blog of Pross™ | Mininova Deletes All… [pross.org.uk]
external link Pirates shed tears of illegal grief as… [downloadsquad.com]
external link End of Torrents as We Know Them…?… [thenextweb.com]
external link 'World's largest' BitTorrent tracker Mininova… [theregister.co.uk]
external link BitTorrent Site Mininova Goes Totally Legit [Tech-Ex]
external link Mininova Goes Legit, Saddens Everyone… [intech news blog]
external link More Music Industry News: Mininova Goes… [hypebot]
external link Mininova goes legit, deletes all illegal… [Neowin.net / Main]
external link Mininova Goes Legit, Saddens Everyone… [Gizmodo]
external link Pirates shed tears of illegal grief as… [Download Squad]
external link BitTorrent Tracker MiniNova Goes Legal-Only… [Lifehacker]

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Related glossary terms:
BitTorrent, piracy, BitTorrent Tracker
Related devices and services:
Mininova

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