Dutch Court Orders “The Pirate Bay” to Remove All Copyrighted Materials Owed by Netherlands Music and Movie Groups

Music and movie industry groups scored a legal victory against The Pirate Bay after a Dutch court has ordered the Swedish peer-to-peer file sharing website to immediately remove all contents and links to materials and other files under copyright protection.

In its decision, a referral court in Amsterdam, Netherlands has order the Swedish online company to remove links of files owned by Netherlands-based recording and film groups, which is subjected to copyright protection of the government.

The court has given The Pirate Bay three months to clear all links in the website that would allow access to various materials and files that was owned by Stichting Brein, a group of musicians and film makers in the country.

The group has earlier filed a lawsuit against The Pirate Bay after discovering that a wide range of materials and other works of their group is being circulated in the P2P file sharing website.

Meanwhile, the court has also ordered the file sharing website to pay the fine of $7, 500 for each violation of the order. If The Pirate Bay does not comply with the said order, the file sharing website will be liable to a maximum of $30 million worth of fine.

It will be recalled that Peter Sunde, Frederik Neij, and Gottfrid Svartholm Varg, the founders of The Pirate Bay were found “guilty” of promoting copyright infringement using the popular social networking website.

The Swedish court issued the order last April and become one of the landmark cases in Internet piracy.

The three founders were also sentence to one year jail term and were ordered to pay more than $3.56 million to the affected industry.

However, the case was still subjected to an appeal as the three founders of The Pirate Bay said that the verdict of the court does not concern the website at all but the wide lobbying of the music and movie industry against them.