The Pirate Bay rival Mininova ordered by court to remove copyright material

A Dutch Web site Mininova was ordered by the Utrecht District Court to remove within three months all files on its servers that point to copyrighted works or face a fine of up to euro5 million ($7.16 million). As is known Mininova manages the largest index of BitTorrent files, software that can be used to trade movies, music and computer games, rivaling The Pirate Bay in the sector.

In a ruling made on Wednesday having showed its support of Stichting Brein, a Dutch-based organization funded by copyright-holder groups, the court said that Mininova was encouraging copyright infringement among its users while profiting from infringement by advertising on the site.

While unlike The Pirate Bay Mininova was removing some files when it received notifications from copyright holders the ruling said it was not enough. The court requires all commercial media works to be copyrighted.

"The court believes it's generally known that commercially made films, games, music and TV series are copyrighted and that these works are only copyright-free in exceptional cases," the ruling said.

Mininova said it was considering an appeal.