Court: Mininova Must Dump Copyrighted Files

Piracy took another hit today, as a Dutch judge ruled that the BitTorrent site Mininova must purge all links to copyrighted files on its Web site or face up to 5 million Euros in penalties. As Mininova doesn’t host the files itself — in peer-to-peer sharing the users host the files — the Netherlands is accusing Mininova of “contributory copyright infringement.” Earlier this year, Mininova had started filtering out torrents that infringed copyrights, and the site has for a long time allowed users to flag infringing content for removal. But neither measure pacified the courts, which today extended an ultimatum with a three month deadline. Combined with troubles at the Pirate Bay, this looks like another victory for Big Content, but it’s only a matter of time before piracy pops up elsewhere. [via Ars Technica]