Dutch usnet indexing site goes offline after legal threats

Newsgroup indexing site Spotplanet has announced that it will cease all activities on January 3rd 2013. The website that links to Usenet downloads made the decision after legal threats of Dutch anti-piracy organisation Brein. After Torrent sites, newsgroup indexing sites seem to be the next target for anti-piracy organisations. Earlier we reported that NZBMatrix decided to shut down it's service but also that several Paypal accounts of Dutch usenet resellers were frozen.

The owner of the Spotplanet website has put up a statement in which he writes that the site has become too big and that they were summoned to cease operations by some organisation. Dutch media report that the Dutch anti-piracy organisation Brein has confirmed that they asked the website owner to shutdown his site and warned him that they would certainly pursue legal actions if he didn't. Apparently the owner of Spotplanet wasn't up to that.

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According to Brein, the site's functionality can be compared to that of FTD, another usenet indexing site that was brought to court by Brein and which lost the case and had to shutdown. It remains unclear  if the owner of Spotplanet is now secured from legal actions, Brein has stated that it hasn't decided on what to do. The organisation does want the owner to sign an agreement in which he agrees to never create a similar site again, because, according to Brein, many sites that close down are restarted with a new name by the same owner(s).

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