‘Destroyed’ Usenet Provider NSE and BREIN End 16-Year Battle With Secret Settlement

Usenet provider News-Service Europe (NSE) and anti-piracy group BREIN have settled their long-running legal dispute. The 16-year battle, during which the Dutch Usenet provider was forced to shut down, only to be later vindicated by the Supreme Court, has ended with a confidential agreement that both parties are pleased with.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

shakehandThe long-running legal battle between News-Service Europe (NSE) and anti-piracy group BREIN has quietly come to an end.

NSE was once one of the largest Usenet providers, but its legal troubles started in 2009, when BREIN took legal action on behalf of the movie and music industries.

In an early verdict in 2011, the Court of Amsterdam concluded that NSE willingly facilitated online piracy through its services. As a result, the company was ordered to remove all pirated content and filter future posts for possible copyright infringements.

According to the Usenet provider, this filtering requirement would’ve been too costly to implement, so it shut down its service while it appealed the case.

Supreme Court Win for NSE

After several more years of litigation, the Amsterdam appeals court ruled that NSE wasn’t liable for users’ pirating activities after all, but NSE was required to offer a responsive and effective notice and takedown procedure, possibly with additional measures.

Unhappy with the outcome, BREIN decided to take the matter to the Dutch Supreme Court. While NSE was no longer a threat, the case could prove crucial for many other Usenet providers.

In 2023, the Supreme Court confirmed that the Usenet provider shouldn’t be held liable for pirating users. The fact that NSE had a decent takedown procedure and no apparent knowledge of infringement weighed in its favor.

The Court also confirmed that NSE didn’t curate any content, nor did it specifically promote copyright infringement.

NSE Seeks Millions in Damages

The Supreme Court ordered BREIN to pay the legal costs. For NSE, however, the victory was bittersweet, as the company had already thrown in the towel well over a decade earlier.

In a final effort to recoup some of its claimed losses, NSE sued BREIN for damages last December. Exact details were not revealed, but the claim could’ve easily reached millions of euros.

While NSE shut down voluntarily, the company says that it saw no other option at the time due to BREIN’s legal pressure. As a result, the entire NSE team lost their jobs.

In its initial response, BREIN looked forward to the new legal battle with confidence. BREIN director Bastiaan van Ramshorst said that NSE willingly decided to shut down its service in 2011, instead of engaging in court-mandated negotiations.

NSE and BREIN Settle

This latest lawsuit could’ve easily added a few more years to the legal battle. However, it won’t come to that, as NSE and BREIN have decided to settle their differences once and for all.

Last Friday, the parties issued the same brief press release. This effectively confirms the end of the 16-year legal battle without adding any further detail.

“Last week the parties reached a settlement, which allowed them to avoid further escalating litigation costs. Both sides are pleased with the outcome and have agreed not to disclose the details of the arrangement,” NSE and BREIN announced.

The announcement

nse brein

This type of tight-lipped announcement suggests that the parties reached a compromise. Since NSE is a defunct entity with no operational future, financial compensation seems the only logical incentive for them to drop the multi-million euro claim.

NSE had little to lose at this point, but, for BREIN, the settlement means that it no longer has to face a claim for ‘millions’ in damages. The details of this agreement will remain secret, which underscores that it remains a sensitive issue after all these years.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Dolphin Surf im Praxistest: BYDs Stadtflitzer kann auch mehr

Der Dolphin Surf von BYD ist gut ausgestattet und bietet überraschend viel Platz – aber kann das Elektroauto gegen Hyundais Inster ankommen? Ein Test von Tobias Költzsch (BYD, Elektroauto)

Der Dolphin Surf von BYD ist gut ausgestattet und bietet überraschend viel Platz - aber kann das Elektroauto gegen Hyundais Inster ankommen? Ein Test von Tobias Költzsch (BYD, Elektroauto)

Anzeige: Black Week: KI und Data Engineering weiterdenken

Die Black Week 2025 in der Golem Karrierewelt widmet sich den Schlüsseltechnologien der Zukunft: KI, Data Engineering und Automatisierung. Bis 30. November gibt es 25 Prozent Rabatt auf sämtliche Workshops. (Golem Karrierewelt, KI)

Die Black Week 2025 in der Golem Karrierewelt widmet sich den Schlüsseltechnologien der Zukunft: KI, Data Engineering und Automatisierung. Bis 30. November gibt es 25 Prozent Rabatt auf sämtliche Workshops. (Golem Karrierewelt, KI)

Lilbits: Updates on Pebble, Rebble, and Aluminium (Android + ChromeOS for PCs)

Google’s upcoming PC operating system that merges elements of Android and ChromeOS has a new name… or at least a code name. And there are updates on both sides of the dispute between Core Devices (the company brining Pebble watches back fro…

Google’s upcoming PC operating system that merges elements of Android and ChromeOS has a new name… or at least a code name. And there are updates on both sides of the dispute between Core Devices (the company brining Pebble watches back from the dead) and Rebble (the developers who made sure that old Pebble watches […]

The post Lilbits: Updates on Pebble, Rebble, and Aluminium (Android + ChromeOS for PCs) appeared first on Liliputing.

Anthropic introduces cheaper, more powerful, more efficient Opus 4.5 model

Longer chats address a long-standing criticism of Claude.

Anthropic today released Opus 4.5, its flagship frontier model, and it brings improvements in coding performance, as well as some user experience improvements that make it more generally competitive with OpenAI’s latest frontier models.

Perhaps the most prominent change for most users is that in the consumer app experiences (web, mobile, and desktop), Claude will be less prone to abruptly hard-stopping conversations because they have run too long. The improvement to memory within a single conversation applies not just to Opus 4.5, but to any current Claude models in the apps.

Users who experienced abrupt endings (despite having room left in their session and weekly usage budgets) were hitting a hard context window (200,000 tokens). Whereas some large language model implementations simply start trimming earlier messages from the context when a conversation runs past the maximum in the window, Claude simply ended the conversation rather than allow the user to experience an increasingly incoherent conversation where the model would start forgetting things based on how old they are.

Read full article

Comments

Rivals object to SpaceX’s Starship plans in Florida—who’s interfering with whom?

“We’re going to continue to treat any LOX-methane vehicle with 100 percent TNT blast equivalency.”

The commander of the military unit responsible for running the Cape Canaveral spaceport in Florida expects SpaceX to begin launching Starship rockets there next year.

Launch companies with facilities near SpaceX’s Starship pads are not pleased. SpaceX’s two chief rivals, Blue Origin and United Launch Alliance, complained last year that SpaceX’s proposal of launching as many as 120 Starships per year from Florida’s Space Coast could force them to routinely clear personnel from their launch pads for safety reasons.

This isn’t the first time Blue Origin and ULA have tried to throw up roadblocks in front of SpaceX. The companies sought to prevent NASA from leasing a disused launch pad to SpaceX in 2013, but they lost the fight.

Read full article

Comments

Kernelcom is a compact mini-laptop with a 12.5 inch ultrawide touchscreen display, mechanical keyboard, and no touchpad (crowdfunding)

Most laptop computers released in the past few decades have a familiar design. With a few exceptions, you can expect a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio display on top and a low-profile keyboard and touchpad on the bottom. The Kernelcom takes a different appr…

Most laptop computers released in the past few decades have a familiar design. With a few exceptions, you can expect a 16:9 or 16:10 aspect ratio display on top and a low-profile keyboard and touchpad on the bottom. The Kernelcom takes a different approach. According to the description in a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for this […]

The post Kernelcom is a compact mini-laptop with a 12.5 inch ultrawide touchscreen display, mechanical keyboard, and no touchpad (crowdfunding) appeared first on Liliputing.