Archive for the 'Mininova-related news' Category

Mininova considers appealing in Brein case

Published on August 26, 2009 in Mininova-related news. 372 Comments

Utrecht, August 26th 2009 – Today the Dutch Court of Utrecht ruled that BitTorrent platform Mininova acts unlawful. Mininova considers to appeal this judgment.

The court did not agree with Brein on all demands. Specifically, it ruled that Mininova does not infringe copyright and neighboring rights. The court also found Mininova can not be expected to remove files that are “reasonably likely” refer to infringing material.

Remarkably, the verdict does not give any consideration to the fact that Mininova has developed a content filter for Brein, nor to the cooperation between Mininova and other organizations of rights holders. This surprises Mininova, because it has always stressed the importance of cooperation.

Erik Dubbelboer, co-founder of Mininova: “We are obviously not satisfied with this ruling. The result of this ruling for Mininova is that we have to reevaluate our business operations. At this time, we cannot determine what this will actually entail or imply. We will have to examine the verdict thoroughly first. We are considering to appeal this judgment.”

Special HDD deal for Mininova users

Published on July 24, 2009 in Mininova-related news. 82 Comments

Hi everyone,

Most people will probably experience similar problems with storage like us: you never have enough space. You just bought a new hard-drive and within a few weeks you filled it up again.

All this storage — even though it is getting cheaper — is still quite expensive. So we were immediately interested when the guys at Freecom contacted us with a cool offer for our users: 20% discount on the “Freecom Hard Drive XS” series. We think this is a great opportunity for you to get a good hard-drive for little money. The prices listed below are less than in any other place we could find and the drives are shipped worldwide.

The Freecom Hard Drive XS

The drive itself received very good reviews. It is housed in a special rubber casing which makes it both very quiet (no fan) and provides optimal grip. Since it’s the smallest type of external hard-drive (3.5″) and because of the anti-shock rubber, it’s perfect to carry around or to take to friends to exchange files.

In order to get the 20% off all you need to do is enter the following promo code on the Freecom checkout page:

mininovaxs

  • 500 GB / 1 TB / 1.5 TB
  • Smallest 3.5″ external hard drive
  • Quiet, thanks to fan-less design
  • Rubberized enclosure, reducing vibration and providing optimal grip
  • Turbo USB 2.0 driver for faster data transfer speeds (Windows only)
  • High quality, sleek design (18.2 x 11.4 x 3.1 cm)
  • One year manufacturers warranty, free help-desk support

You can choose between 3 sizes:

500 GB – Buy now image buy now
€79.00 / $99.00 / £74.99
€63.20 / $79.20 / £59.99

1 TB – Buy now image buy now
€109.00 / $139.00 / £99.98
€87.20 / $111.20 / £79.98

1.5 TB – Buy now image buy now
€139.00 / $179.00 / £124.99
€111.20 / $143.20 / £99.99

The code will only be active for 2 weeks (till 09-08-2009) or until the drives go out of stock, so make sure you order quickly!

You can order the harddisks by clicking on the product link above.

Cheers,

The Mininova staff

Verdict postponed

Published on July 9, 2009 in Mininova-related news. 116 Comments

Hi all,

Here’s a short update on the ongoing court trial. The judge has postponed the date of the verdict (originally planned July 15) to August 26, due to the summer holiday period.

Please stay tuned for updates!

Thanks, The Mininova staff

Mininova demands rectification report from working group

Published on July 2, 2009 in Mininova-related news and Personal rants. 46 Comments

Hi all,

In January 2008, a working group was installed with the goal to evaluate copyright laws. The working group consists of four members of the Dutch parliament. Two weeks ago, the working group published a report with the name Auteursrechten. Een rapport (’Copyright – a report’). The report includes several recommendations related to reforming copyright laws.

Unfortunately the report includes several factually incorrect assumptions related to Mininova, among which:

  • That Mininova refuses to remove torrent files after a complaint has been filed
  • That Mininova adds ‘reviews’ to torrent files uploaded by users
  • That Mininova pro-actively removes torrents that refer to ‘incorrect content (e.g. porn)’

Besides these factual errors, the report also implies that all torrents on Mininova refer to copyrighted material, that Mininova hosts the content itself, and that Mininova profits from distributing these torrents.

We are very displeased with the fact that the working group didn’t contact us prior to releasing this report, or even took a look at mininova.org. If they had done so, they would’ve seen that we offer a copyright policy service for content owners for years and that we work closely with the content industry.

We demand that the spreading of false information related to Mininova will be stopped. In addition, we demand that the working group removes the name Mininova from the report and places a rectification on the website of the Dutch parliament and in several national newspapers. If these demands are not met, we’ll consider legal steps. To our surprise and nuisance the working group refuses to respond to the essence of the claim, being the factual errors about us and our services.

That’s it for now, stay tuned for updates!

- The Mininova staff

Bruno interview (update)

Published on June 18, 2009 in Interesting links and Mininova-related news. 30 Comments

Hi all,

On July 10, 2009 the movie Brüno will be released in cinemas worldwide. Actor Sacha Baron Cohen (of Ali G and Borat fame) will play yet another funny character – if you liked his previous appearances, you’ll love this one!

Digg Dialogg is doing an interview with Brüno next week, and we will post the interview on June 30 here on Mininova. That’s not all: you can submit your questions to Bruno, and the top rated questions will be asked!

That’s it for now – keep watching Mininova on June 30!

–update–
The interview with Brüno has been published.

Cheers, The Mininova staff

Court trial update

Published on June 2, 2009 in Mininova-related news. 208 Comments

Hi all,

Today was the courtroom seating of our trial with BREIN. It was a very interesting day. The verdict is scheduled for the 15th of July.

Regards,

The Mininova staff

Court trial with BREIN postponed until June 2nd

Published on May 18, 2009 in Mininova-related news. 200 Comments

Hi all,

The upcoming court trial with BREIN, which was planned on Wednesday May 20th, has been postponed until Tuesday June 2nd, at 13:00 hours. The reason for this postponement is solely due to personal circumstances of our attorney and has explicitly nothing to do with the content of the case.

We would like to thank the parties involved for their cooperation in this postponement.

Regards,

The Mininova staff

Torrent removal trial

Published on May 6, 2009 in Mininova technical and Mininova-related news. 710 Comments

Hi all,

Here at Mininova we are working continuously on ways to improve our platform. One example is our content distribution service, where we offer producers and artists a way to expose and share their work with BitTorrent users.

Today, we decided to extend our platform and run a trial with content recognition. This basically means that likely infringing video files referred to by torrents are checked by a third party content recognition system. If the system finds that the file corresponds to unauthorized content, we remove and block the torrent that refers to this file on Mininova.

We hope that this system will make it easier for copyright owners to remove torrents that refer to infringing content from Mininova, while still offering the best platform to our users.

Cheers!

The Mininova staff

Content Distribution back online

Published on April 27, 2009 in Mininova-related news. 55 Comments

Hi everyone,

As you might have noticed there haven’t been any new Content Distribution torrents on the frontpage for a week. This was due to a problem in the storage backend of our service. The problem has been fixed today, so Content Distribution users should be able to distribute all their new release again.

Sorry for the inconvenience this problem might have caused,

The Mininova Staff

Site improvements and a new office

Published on February 19, 2009 in Interesting links, Mininova technical and Mininova-related news. 165 Comments

Hi everyone,

It has been a while since Mininova has undergone some changes, but today we’re releasing some new features, including:

  • A layout update, the top advertisement banner is gone.
  • An improved search field with the possibility to restrict your search to a specific category.
  • The search results are also improved, including the highlighting of the results (example).
  • New buttons on several pages (thanks to a technique described by Google developer Douglas Bowman).
  • Instead of creating a torrent file and seeding your data, you can now use VIPeers for uploading. VIPeers is a free service that will create a torrent file, seed your content and send you back to the Mininova upload page, where you can fill in the details.
  • “Remember me” checkbox on the login page, the possibility to remain logged in, even when you quit your browser and connect via another Internet network. Although this may be very useful, do not use this option on a public computer (in a library or so).
  • New servers to keep up with the growing number of visitors. These servers will be installed in a few days.
  • The new Mininova officeSome bug fixes.
  • We moved to a new office location in downtown Utrecht, The Netherlands. We used to rent a small office space at Regus, but we had a very bad experience (note to startups: do NOT rent at Regus! They will try to nail you with the agreement). We are happy with our new office inside a classical building alongside the city canal. See our contact page for more information. We’ll put up some more pictures on Picasa.

We hope you will enjoy these changes! Let us know if you experience any problems.