FANCY AN ANTI-PIRACY THREAT….TO YOUR DROPBOX EMAIL ADDRESS?

Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN is stepping up its game when it comes to scaring would-be pirates. While people sharing files in public using BitTorrent are the group's usual targets, BREIN has just sent scary emails to people who thought they were sharing eBooks privately using Dropbox.

There are many different ways that people are able to share files online and they broadly fall into two categories – public and private.
Public sharing is generally carried out using peer-to-peer networks such as BitTorrent. Anyone participating in a torrent swarm should be aware that unless they take precautions by using a VPN or proxy, their IP address is visible to all of the other people engaged in the same act.
Private sharing can also take many forms, from exchanging content via email to uploading and downloading content from invite-only servers, for example. While it has to be noted there are always weak leaks, this kind of sharing usually receives less interest from anti-piracy companies as it tends to be scattered and somewhat cost ineffective to police.
That being said, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has just managed to scare an unnamed number of pirates after they participated in a presumed-private sharing circle that utilized Dropbox for exchanging copyrighted content.
The story traces back to December 2015 when BREIN obtained an ex parte court order against a man they accused of being the administrator of a Dropbox account that was being used to distribute copyrighted eBooks.
It was alleged that the man was active on a number of Internet forums and on request granted fellow members with access to said account in order to download titles without paying. After a complaint from BREIN the court found this behavior unacceptable and ordered the man, in his absence, to cease his activities or face fines of 2,000 euros per day up to a maximum of 50,000 euros.
However, as previously reported, BREIN is now regularly striking private settlement deals with people it also targets in court. It’s not known if there was a financial arrangement in this particular case but quite clearly BREIN has been able to leverage its position to scare the individuals that had been downloading from the Dropbox account.

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