The infamous Dutch anti-piracy organization BREIN has infringed TorrentFreak's copyright and blatantly copied a quote from one of our articles without attributing the source. TorrentFreak is thus considering legal action against these copy/paste pirates, where they may face a fine of up to $975,000 and several years in prison.

Today, BREIN published a press release (translated) full of half-truths in which they pride themselves over the recent move of SumoTorrent to Canada. In the press release they refer to TorrentFeak as a “pirate weblog”, and use a quote from an interview we did with the SumoTorrent administrator a little over a week ago. However, they do not link back to the original article, they don’t even mention TorrentFreak at all, thereby infringing on our copyright license.

Shocking indeed, who could have ever thought that these noble copyright protectors would be capable of such barbaric practices? Maybe they’ll start stealing children next?

The reason why BREIN didn’t link back to us is obvious, they don’t want the public to read a “pirate weblog” so they would find out what they’re really like. BREIN is known to threaten, intimidate and scare P2P webmasters, and they are pretty successful at it.

Like most other anti-piracy organizations, BREIN is above all a propaganda machine that effectively twists the truth to educate Internet users. They are a puppet of the MPAA and large media corporations and were recently awarded by Hollywood with an anti-piracy Oscar (translated) for its effectiveness. They even have a trophy cabinet in their offices to show off to their visitors.

Unfortunately, BREIN is not the only anti-piracy organization that infringes copyright. In February we reported that the MPAA used “Forest Blog” software without authorization. The software had been completely stripped of his name, and links back to his site, thereby violating the linkware license. The MPAA later said that they were only testing the software. Not that it makes any difference, but why should one (willingly) remove all credits to the developer if it’s only a test?

But the MPAA doesn’t only steal software, they also pirate films. For those who haven’t seen the great documentary “This Film Is Not Yet Rated“, the MPAA openly admitted that they made unauthorized copies themselves. Kirby Dick, the producer of the documentary found out that the film that he submitted for screening purposes was copied without his permission. Say what?

So who’s calling who a pirate here?