In an attempt to ensure that Dutch citizens can’t access The Pirate Bay, BREIN took three of the tracker’s founders to court. The anti-piracy outfit won the case and Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter were ordered to block Dutch users, a decision they decided to appeal.

Today the Amsterdam Court announced that the earlier default judgment has been nullified. That is, the three operators don’t have to block access to all Dutch users.

Instead the Court ruled that The Pirate Bay has to remove a list of torrents linking to copyrighted works. The list is to be provided by BREIN, and is similar to the earlier ruling against Mininova. The defendants are given three months to comply, if not, they will face penalties of 5,000 euros ($7,500) per person, per day.

In addition to removing the torrents the defendants have to block Dutch users from accessing certain parts of the site (across all their domains) where users can download copyrighted files.

Ernst-Jan Louwers, the lawyer for the three Pirate Bay defendants told TorrentFreak that his clients are currently considering whether or not to appeal this judgment.

This is a breaking story and will be updated soon.

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In an attempt to make sure that Dutch citizens can’t access The Pirate Bay, BREIN took three of the tracker’s ‘founders’ to court. The anti-piracy outfit won the case and Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter were ordered to block Dutch users, a decision they decided to appeal.

This week the appeal was heard before the Amsterdam court. BREIN’s lawyer tried to convince the judge that the three are responsible for the site’s daily operations. Lawyer Ernst-Jan Louwers on the other hand represented the Pirate Bay defendants, arguing that BREIN sued the wrong people.

In addition, Louwers revealed that BREIN brought in a credit report, apparently faked in an attempt to mislead the court. The report in question shows Fredrik Neij as the CEO of Seychelles-based Reservella, the company believed to own The Pirate Bay.

This misstep by BREIN was pointed out to the court, and former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde later wrote a detailed article summing up the inconsistencies. Now, a few days later everyone can see for themselves that the report is not what its supposed to be.

The documents prooving that the evidence presented by BREIN was false have now been exposed, on The Pirate Bay of course. The ‘leaked’ torrent (mirror) contains the following information:

- A fax of the Experian report as sent by BREIN.
- A pdf version of the Experian report with the unedited footer.
- A fax from Mossack Fonseca stating that they never acted as registered agent as the report claims.
- A document from the authorities stating that the company registered with the ID 32549 is NOT Reservella.

TorrentFreak contacted BREIN for a response to the alleged misstep, and director Tim Kuik told us that the Experian report was not used by their lawyer in court because there was already sufficient evidence that Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter are responsible for The Pirate Bay.

“Denying their responsibility and playing hide and seek is what the gentlemen of The Pirate Bay have been doing since they began their illegal business”, said Kuik. “We have sufficient reason to assume that they are still responsible.”

“The company in the Seychelles looks like a thin veil to cover up what is really going on and it appears that they too like to play hide and seek just like the gents from The Pirate Bay,” he added.

The lawyer for the defendants totally disagrees with BREIN’s assessment. Aside from BREIN’s alleged attempt to fabricate evidence, he told the court that the three defendants are not the owners of the site. Even if they were, The Pirate Bay in itself is not illegal because it’s merely one of many distribution platforms that are available on the Internet, the lawyer told the court.

Whose side the court will take and whether or not the alleged attempt to manipulate evidence will be taken into account will be known in two weeks, when the appeal verdict is set to be announced.

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In an attempt to get The Pirate Bay offline, BREIN took three of the tracker’s ‘founders’ to court. BREIN won the case and Fredrik, Gottfrid and Peter were ordered to block Dutch users within 10 days or face thousands of euros each day in penalties.

After the verdict was made public, the three defendants immediately announced they would appeal.

Lawyer Ernst-Jan Louwers represented the Pirate Bay defendants in the appeal today, and he revealed the the anti-piracy outfit brought in documents that are apparently faked in an attempt to mislead the court.

BREIN submitted a report on Reservella to the court. Reservella is the company that planned to sell The Pirate Bay to Global Gaming Factory, and according to the report that was apparently written by UK company Experian one of the Pirate Bay founders is the company’s CEO.

However, the defendants lawyer has presented several facts that showed that the report is not what it claims to be.

“The report is an attempt to mislead the Court,” Louwers said, adding that the Court should reject it since it’s “fake, deceptive and completely unreliable.”

The lawyer went on to argue that the anti-piracy outfit is merely trying to save its face, and that BREIN will do all it can to succeed in their crusade against the three defendants. He then goes through a list of several points that show why the evidence is fabricated.

First of all, the Experian report on Reservella seems to have copied the Whois data of the Pirate Bay domain. It lists defendant Fredrik Neij as the CEO and the formation date for the company is identical to the date when the domain was registered.

This makes no sense, as Reservella was founded less than a year ago according to official information from the Seychelles Government, and Neij is not linked to the company as the report claims.

If that isn’t enough already, the company ID number as reported in the document is incorrect, and the claims that Fredrik Neij is a citizen of the Seychelles are even more absurd.

Former Pirate Bay spokesman Peter Sunde is outraged by BREIN’s attempt to cheat their way into a victory, and will press charges against BREIN and its director Tim Kuik.

“I consider what they have done as criminal. Much more severe than any ‘aiding with potential copyright infringement’ could ever be,” he writes, adding “Maybe then we can finally have the real criminals shut down and put in jail!”

Developing story…

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