After Adi had finished his presentation it was (R4U) Xarenion’s turn to take the stand. The judge asked him some questions and Xarenion answered them. At some points his answers seemed very different from the answers he gave on the same questions during his interrogation at his arrest in 2004 is what the judge said. But Xarenion said he just told the detectives what they wanted to hear so he could be home as soon as possible because Christmas was just a few days ahead. The interrogation was considerably aggressive and intimidating he said. Not a very smart thing to do, but considering Xarenion was almost 16 years of age when he got busted i understand he played along with the detectives so he hopefully could be with his family for Christmas instead of in a police cell.

As it seems the detectives threatened him to put him on an airplane and hand him over to the American authorities, “they will get the answers out of you, and are less tolerant then we (FIOD-ECD) are, and they will get you to talk” is what the investigators said, according to Xarenion to the judge. That terrified him, so he just told the detectives what they wanted to hear as it was written down in his statement which he signed, hoping they would let him go home. Wishful thinking of course, because they where not planning on letting him go before they had a full (manipulative) statement.

Further Xarenion let the court know he did not see linking of hashcodes as illegal or unlawful because there is no law that forbids the linking as such, and that was the reason why he ignored the summations of BREIN to take the site offline. The complaints from BREIN where not specified to a certain link (or links) of copyright protected material, because if it had Xarenion said, he was more then willing to remove the hash links from his site. But BREIN just wanted to shut Releases4U down in spite of the links where pointing to legal or illegal content, and that was a bit to much to ask. Had BREIN specified which hash links they wanted to be removed (with the right motivation) it would have been no problem. BREIN however had no intention to listen they just wanted to wipe out Releases4U completely.

To backup this story, Xarenion showed some e-mail correspondence whit a Dutch artist “Ben Liebrands” to the judge in which he asked to remove a hash link that was pointing to his latest “YearMix 2004” CD, and sins mr. Liebrands specified exactly what hash link he meant, the hash link was removed from the site. BREIN however never specified any hash link, so it was evident there was no action taken at there summations. My grandma always used to say “if you want the last drop out of the can, you’ll get the lid on your nose” meaning BREIN was pushing his luck demanding to take Releases4U offline without any legal argument, and that was just one step to far.

So far the statement of Xarenion, next in line was Ithaca (a 3th year Law student). The judge asked him more or less the same questions, except according to the files Ithaca had during his interrogation admitted he was a member of a release group called DVD-ET (DVD Europe Team) and he had downloaded a few films via FTP for his own private use, although they where meant for spreading on the P2P network by this group. Ithaca maneuvered carefully around this question, saying he had only helped to setup the FTP network and had no meaningful role in this group but giving advice. As i wrote before downloading is not an offend in the Netherlands even if it is illegal content, just as long as it is for private use. But i saw the judge making some notes on this issue and i had no good feeling about this one, which later seemed to be confirmed by the judge in his final plea (more about this later). On a very tricky question (for Ithaca) referring to what he had declared during his interrogation, Ithaca said he wanted to make use of his right not to answer this question. Not a very smart thing to do though, but answering the question would have made it hard for him to prove his innocence, so it eventually was the only right choice. The judge came with his next questions and Ithaca answered these without hesitation.

Also Ithaca took place behind the laptop for a demonstration which would make clear that an ED2K site like Releases4U or ShareConnector (or any ED2K site for that matter) where not needed explicitly to get the hash links that where needed to tell eMule or eDonkey where to find the content. He explained that a good formatted search action on Google would get you hundreds of hash links, Torrents, just pain films, MP3 music or whatever you where looking for. He demonstrated how these search strings had to be, to get an mp3 song or album. While the search string was entered, Tim Kuik (CEO of BREIN) and Mr. De Compos Neto (FIOD-ECD investigator) went from my left hand site in the room to my right hand site so they had a better view at the mega screen. I looked like they both had never seen this way of searching for hash links or music files before and it made me laugh in myself. These where the specialists investigators that had to getter evidence of copyright infringement, it was pathetic to see them stick out there necks, and learned how a Google search spit out hundreds of files, free for download. The same search trick could be used whit Yahoo, Lycos and almost any other search engine.

To let you guys see how it works, whit thanks to jianxuanyuan (Shockwave Flash needed) go and see youtube: http://nl.youtube.com/watch?v=ji7IyuT_Uxo

ED2K and or Torrent sites do not host anything special or illegal on there servers but hash links, which obviously could just as easily be extracted from Google or any other search engine. What ever the reason is that BREIN or any of the anti piracy organization to leave Google and all other search engines alone, you all can guess. It’s all about money, the entertainment industry is no party for a giant like Google so they dont even bother to go after them.

Mr. Kuik (BREIN) and Mr. De Compos Neto (FIOD-ECD) where so to see shocked and impressed, i could read it on there faces.

After the demonstration of Ithaca the judge proposed to have a lunchbreak, the case was dismissed for one hour.

To be continued …..

By Adi Moore

Adi MooreFounder
Adi, the anti-censorship crusader and tech-preneur, bootstrapped his first venture in 2001 from his attic into a digital empire. With a heart for open dialogue and transparent technology, he tackles censorship like a pro wrestler. Dive into his deep insights on freedom of speech, internet liberation, and his secret info recipe.

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