The BREIN foundation

The BREIN foundation is the joint anti-piracy program of authors, artists and producers of music, film and interactive software; A unique bundling of forces of the entire entertainment industry in the fight against Intellectual Property theft.

BREIN is the central contact for government, law enforcement, trade and media in the Netherlands with respect to all issues concerning the unauthorised copying and distribution of entertainment products both offline and online.

BREIN is the Dutch acronym for 'Protection Rights Entertainment Industry Netherlands' and also the Dutch word for 'brain'.

The BREIN participants.

* The music, video and interactive departments of the Dutch association for producers and importers of image and sound carriers, NVPI.
* The Dutch Publishers Association, NUV , on behalf of the publishers of multimedia software.
* The Dutch association of phonogram retailers, NVGD.
* The international organisation of major motion picture producers, Motion Picture Association.
* The joint licensor of non-theatrical video performance rights, Videma.
* The Dutch association of film distributors, NVF.
* The Dutch music rights collecting society Buma/Stemra on behalf of composers, textwriters and music publishers.
* BREIN also works with the international association of music producers, IFPI, and maintains regular contact with the Business Software Alliance and the international association of interactive distributors IDSA.

The BREIN job.

1. BREIN develops anti-piracy policy and directs and co-ordinates the fight against piracy.
2. BREIN addresses both the wide-spread piracy by individuals and the large-scale piracy by criminal organisations.
3. BREIN focuses both on the traditional offline trade in pirated products and the rampant online piracy on the internet.
4. BREIN investigates, takes civil action and supplies information and expertise for criminal, administrative and fiscal action. Criminal investigations are carried out by the anti-piracy team of the FIOD-ECD (Fiscal and Economic Crime Service), which operates under the supervision of a special unit of the Public Prosecution Service. BREIN and FIOD-ECD also work closely with Customs to intercept import and transit of pirate products.

The BREIN mission.

1. To serve and protect authors, artists, producers and distributors of creative entertainment product against commercially significant theft of copyright and neighbouring rights.
2. To enlist the assistance of government, law enforcement, business and general public in this quest.

The BREIN anti-piracy program.

BREIN executes an integral anti-piracy program, which focuses on:
1. Prevention and security
2. Legislation
3. Investigation: online and offline; private and criminal
4. Litigation: civil; criminal; administrative; fiscal
5. Sentencing
6. Training
7. Education
8. PR

In the execution of its program BREIN liases with its sister anti-piracy organisations throughout Europe and the world as well as with the international branch organisations of the audio-visual entertainment industry such as the IFPI, MPA, IDSA and BSA. This international co-operation is crucial in view of the increasing cross-border character of piracy.

Dutch Case law:

Lycos vs Pessers: Supreme Court sets criteria for ISP disclosure of identity of probable offender to injured party.
Supreme Court, 25 november 2005.
http://zoeken.rechtspraak.nl/resultpage.aspx?snelzoeken=true&searchtype=ljn&ljn=AU4019&u_ljn=AU4019(in Dutch)

BREIN vs Techno Design: Facilitating piracy deemed unlawful. Mp3 search engine making systematic and structural use of the availability of unauthorized files. Site not providing mere technical facility.
The Court of Appeal of Amsterdam, 15 June 2006.
http://www.book9.nl/getobject.aspx?id=2778

BREIN vs UPC: ISP obliged to disclose identity of uploader to bittorrent site.
Amsterdam District Court, 24 August 2006.
http://book9.nl/getobject.aspx?id=2777

BREIN vs KPN: Telecom carrier ordered (a) to disclose identity of user operating a bittorrent site via broadband connection infringer and (b) to keep the site offline.
District Court Of The Hague, 5 January 2007.
http://www.book9.nl/getobject.aspx?id=2678

BREIN vs Leaseweb: ISP obliged (a) to disclose identity of bittorrent site operator and  (b) to take the site offline.
Amsterdam District Court, 21 june 2007.
http://zoeken.rechtspraak.nl/resultpage.aspx?snelzoeken=true&searchtype=ljn&ljn=BA7810&u_ljn=BA7810 (in Dutch)

BREIN vs Shareconnector: ed2k indexing site is unlawful.
Amsterdam District Court, 24 January 2008.
http://www.boek9.nl/getobject.aspx?id=4266(in Dutch)