The well-known Dutch anti-piracy group has been fighting against illegal downloading very actively over 2016. BREIN targeted hundreds of websites via various enforcement actions – as a result, many of them shut down or left their hosting providers. The group also focused on prolific uploaders of illegal content, which resulted in settlements with pirating users.

BREIN, which is supported by Hollywood and other entertainment industries, has taken down hundreds of smaller websites over the past years, and is not going to stop. Along with targeting illegal websites all over the world, the group also strengthened its focus on private uploaders of copyrighted content. The Dutch outfit underlines that copyright enforcement must make sure that legal offerings can sustain. Pirates don’t stop pirating because the content is free, and addressing this problem requires enforcement – not only for creation and production, but also for content distribution and further investment in innovation. This is why BREIN targets all pirate sources, services, and facilitators. Its aim is to disrupt the pirate ecosystem to lower its prevalence by targeting websites, their hosting providers, search engines, social media, advertisers, payment providers, and even individual uploaders and downloaders.

What are the achievements? BREIN took down 231 illegal websites and services, including 84 linking websites, 63 streaming portals and 34 torrent indexes. Part of them shut down for good, while others were forced to change hosting providers. Besides, the group targeted or caught 26 prolific uploaders, removed 18 infringing Facebook groups and 2.5m search results from Google, and even took down 4,000 ads for illegal content.

Thanks to TorrentFreak for providing the source of the article.