Dutch internet piracy watchdog Brein forced 600 piracy sites to go offline in 2011. The foundation regards the blockade of The Pirate Bay site by two Dutch ISPs an important result of its work of the past few years.

In its annual report Brein states that 383 of the allegedly illegal sites were offering torrent downloads. The other 217 included Usenet sites and forums. In addition, Brein had 60,000 ads removed from private trading and auction sites.

Last year, a court ruled that an online payment service had to hand over the data pertaining to one of its clients, which in turn allowed Brein to crack down on the owner of an illegal site.

Brein wants to take things one step further and is seeking a court ruling ordering online payment services to stop providing their services to clients operating illegal websites.

Such a ruling has not yet been handed down because, so far, illegal sites terminated their business with the payment services when they were forced to close down.

Brein claims that, thanks to its efforts, the hosting of illegal content is on the wane among Dutch web hosting services and the hosting of piracy sites now has moved abroad.

(gsh/imm)

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