TorrentFreak reports that the torrent search engine Mininova:

…has lost its civil dispute with Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN. The judge ruled that Mininova is not directly responsible for any copyright infringement, but ordered it to remove all torrents linking to copyrighted material within three months, or face a penalty of up to 5 million euros.

The courts attitude towards the site was very different to the Swedish Pirate Bay case since it was not BREIN’s intention was not to shut down the site. But they demanded a filtering of infringing keywords to ensure that copyright holders were protected.

The court agreed with BREIN’s assessment that Mininova is not doing enough to protect the rights of copyright holders, and ordered the site to remove all torrent files that link to infringing content within three months, or pay a penalty up to 5 million euros ($7 million).

The interesting thing is that the courts are demanding that Mininova do more than apply a takedown policy that allows copyright holders to remove infringing torrents but stop short from demanding the site is liable for everything straight away (which was the Swedish approach). The fact that “doing more” is extremely complex (and therefore costly) did not impress the courts.