BREIN is a Dutch acronym for ÂProtection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands and is also the Dutch word for ÂbrainÂ. As the name suggests, it is a joint anti-piracy group that works on behalf of authors, artists, publishers, producers and distributors of music, film, games, interactive software and books. It is in other words and as their website states ÂA unique bundling of forces of the entire entertainment industry in the fight against Intellectual Property theft.Â
It has been working overtime over the last few months its efforts have been focused in the targeting of Âup-loadersÂ. This week it announced the victory against a prolific copyright infringer in the Netherlands.
A large-scale, un-named, Usenet up-loader who had shared over 1,500 TV shows was at the centre of the dispute in question. Following the court records, BREIN used the message-id of the files uploaded to link them to the defendant. The un-named man had also been advertising his uploads on various sites and as such the files were also tracked to these posts.
BREIN says that the financial situation of man was taken into consideration in order to determine a suitable settlement amount. It has been agreed that he will pay Â7,500 in damages and stop his activities. If he fails to do the latter he will be required, by way of an ex-parte court order, to pay a penalty of Â2,000 per day up to a maximum of Â50,000.
The settlement money will not go to artists or rights holders instead it will go to BREIN to fund future campaigns against the theft of Intellectual Property. BREIN has larger scale Âup-loaders in its targets, they have already started to monitor the IP addresses of frequent BitTorrent users.Â
