AMSTERDAM — Europe's largest Usenet provider, News-Service.com, has closed down after a Dutch court denied an appeal in an antipiracy case brought on and won by BREIN, which represents movie and music industries in its quest to protect intellectual property.
BREIN, which waged a successful two-year legal battle against the 15-year-old company, ordered News-Service.com to remove all content that infringed copyrights, but because of its large wealth of content News-Service.com said it couldn't comply.
"Unfortunately, News-Service.com sees no way of complying with the court's verdict," its website said. "As a consequence, on Oct. 28, we started interlocutory proceedings and asked the summary judge to order BREIN to cease the execution of the verdict.
"We have learned today that the summary judge has denied our claims. This means that we are forced to cease our operations with immediate effect."