The Bescherming Rechten Entertainment Industrie Nederland (BREIN) translates roughly as Protection Rights for the Entertainment, Industry [of the] Netherlands. BREIN is a trade association representing both the Dutch recording industry and movie studios. It is roughly analogous to the MPAA or RIAA in the US.
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BREIN is perhaps best known for shutting down Dutch eDonkey 2000 link giant ShareConnector.com in December 2004. Due to controversy over the legality of links to illegal content, and a lack of quality in the evidence provided by BREIN,[1] the case has not been put to trial yet. After being offline for two years, ShareConnector reopened in December 2006 but after barely one year; on November 12, 2007, Shareconnector went offline again.
Last Monday the guys from BREIN visited me at home to convince me to close ShareConnector or else they will start a civil proceeding with a claim. Of course, this does not mean I agree with their point of view, it's just that I can't afford taking any risks. As of today, November 12, 2007 I decided to close down. If there is anything new to report, you will be informed. Thank you for all your support and understanding.
On October 23, 2007 BREIN, together with IFPI, BPI, Dutch police, and other organizations shut down prominent Bittorrent tracker Oink's Pink Palace[2]
After a series of allegations that Usenet community Fill Threads Database (FTD) was acting illegally, the Dutch FTD started a lawsuit against BREIN in May 2009. BREIN president Tim Kuik alleged in a Dutch newspaper that “Although they [FTD] are not carrying illegal content on their servers, what FTD does is simply criminal”. FTD is suing for a retraction of this libelous statement and demands a declaration from the courts that its activities are entirely within the law.
On the 1 June 2009 Tim Kuik published an online article claiming BREIN's website was "broken" by hackers performing DDoS attacks. He speculated about a possible connection with the intended court summons against The Pirate Bay. Several independent sources reported the site's deep links were still available (only the frontpage was inaccessible) and as such BREIN's claim of having been attacked was false. Brein responded claiming the attacks had stopped and that the site's year old backup had been used to recover the site. Because the backup was dated, the website was now under construction.
Internet blog Geenstijl purportedly discovered BREIN's server was still fully operational and there had been no attack whatsoever - the complete news archive was still available.[3][4][5] (A password was later added to BREIN's news archive to prevent further checks on availability.)
On 23 June 2009 The Pirate Bay announced a lawsuit against Tim Kuik on libel charges, claiming The Pirate Bay had nothing to do with the alleged DDoS attack.[6]
In September 2009 BREIN CEO Tim Kuik attracted controversy when in a news conference he stated he's currently using a laptop confiscated from a "pirate" and given to him by someone involved with the case.[7]
BREIN attracted controversy again when several suspicious aspects of their lawsuit against The Pirate Bay and Reservella were revealed, including evidence that documents used to link Fredrik Neij of The Pirate Bay to Reservella were faked.[8][9] Peter Sunde and the Dutch Pirate Party filed criminal felony charges against both Tim Kuik and BREIN for fraud and forgery.
In January 2011, Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN targeted one of the Internet’s largest warez piracy topsites. The site, known as Swan, was taken down by hosting provider WorldStream and without judicial process BREIN seized its servers. The owners of the servers retaliated by seizing them back and may sue BREIN for breach of privacy and property rights as BREIN is a private organization and has no special legal or investigative authority.[10]