MPAA Takes A Dozen Torrent Sites Offline
The MPAA has managed to take a dozen torrent sites offline in the United States, with help from Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The 12 torrent sites - which remain anonymous - were pulled offline by their hosting companies following complaints from the two organizations.
Context & Ripple Effects
The MPAA's enforcement playbook has been broadening for years: a court push to have isoHunt declared liable in 2009, MPAA operatives seeding fake torrents back in 2007, and heavy lobbying that produced an anti-piracy bill its own lawyers-turned-lobbyists celebrated in 2008. Last month it reported RapidShare to the US Government as a notorious market, signaling a preference for pressuring intermediaries over chasing individual sites.
This operation adds a new layer: Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN — no stranger to TorrentFreak readers since its public exchange with the site in 2007 — working alongside the MPAA to get US hosting companies to pull the plug directly. That echoes the 2007 police-raid takedown of a BitTorrent tracker, but swaps law enforcement for commercial pressure on hosts.
First-order effects
- A dozen anonymous torrent sites go dark immediately as their US hosting companies comply with MPAA-BREIN complaints, forcing operators to find new hosts or shut down.
- US hosting providers are now established targets for anti-piracy complaints, meaning any site they serve faces removal without a court order.
Second-order effects
- Hosting companies face rising incentive to vet or drop torrent-linked customers preemptively, raising costs for legitimate high-volume file-sharing services that look similar to infringing ones.
- Cross-border enforcement becomes cheaper: a Dutch group can now take down American-hosted content through complaint letters alone, inviting other national anti-piracy bodies to adopt the same route instead of pursuing litigation like the MPAA's isoHunt case.
Third-order effects
- Enforcement migrates from courts and ISPs toward the hosting layer itself, making uptime dependent on a provider's tolerance for complaint volume rather than legal rulings.
- If complaint-driven takedowns keep proving faster than litigation, expect the studios' parallel tracks — legislative lobbying plus intermediary pressure — to converge on formal notice-and-takedown regimes negotiated between rights holders and hosts.
The trend: Anti-piracy enforcement is shifting from courtroom litigation toward direct complaints against hosting intermediaries, with international groups like BREIN and the MPAA coordinating across borders.