Brein goes after SumoTorrent hoster - fails finding website owner

Dutch media report that anti-piracy organisation Brein has started a new battle in the war against piracy. Its latest quest is to bring down the torrent website SumoTorrent. The organisation blames the website for hosting illegal downloads of videos, games, music and software. It estimates that SumoTorrent has about 4 million files available of which it estimates that 98% is illegal. According to Brein the site is bigger than the famous Piratebay and in order to bring it down the organisation is now going after its hosting company.

The website was hosted at the Dutch hosting company XS Networks (now closed) and Brein has requested them several times to take SumoTorrent down and to hand over personal details about the people behind the website. The hosting provider refused to do this without a court order, Brein went to court and got the court order. The hosting provider handed over the information but refused to sign a declaration which said they would be held responsible for any damages caused by SumoTorrent.

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Dutch laws say that the damages can't be recovered by hosting providers but Brein states that the hosting provider was negligent and demands for compensation for infringed copyrights and payment of their laywer.

Before , SumoTorrent was hosted by Dutch hostingcompany Leaseweb which removed the site per request of Brein and handed over the personal details of the owners. This turned out to be fake and Brein was unable to close down the website. In the meanwhile the the website moved to Canada and Japan. Then it moved to XS Networks in the Netherlands where Brein is after, but the website already moved to the Ukraine where it's currently hosted.

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Brein claims that XS Networks is holding back information on the owners of SumoTorrent,  the webhoster denies this and has announced it will hand over a bank statement to proof it. While Brein claims that it wants to shutdown the website, the webhoster thinks that Brein wants to intimidate the webhosting company to make other webhosters afraid and to convince them to cooperate with future requests.

Brein refuses to settle or to reach an agreement with the web hosting company as it doesn't want to set a precedent where not cooperating with Brein pays off in the end, therefor Brein is demanding a court ruling.

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