If you still care about The Pirate Bay, you might care about what's going on in the Netherlands. It's no secret that last month, BREIN summoned the ownership/administrators (or whatever they're calling themselves these days) of The Pirate Bay to Amsterdam to answer charges over copyright infringement. They were creative with their summons, as they used Twitter, Facebook, and effectively, the World Wide Web to try and bring them in.

Not surprisingly, they never showed up. But Global Gaming Factory (GGF), the supposed new ownership (which appears to be vaporizing quickly), sent their representative to Amsterdam; which we can only imagine this was an effort to play nice with BREIN and to put their best foot forward. The verdict was scheduled for July 30th, and will address both the current ownership and GGF.

So here we are, July 30, 2009, and the verdict is in. The court ruled that The Pirate Bay must cut off access to the Netherlands - and each day it does not, must pay BREIN 30,000 Euro per day.

"The district court of Amsterdam today issued an injunction against ThePirateBay in the Netherlands. The owners must make the site, servers, trackers and databases inaccessible for internet users in the Netherlands. They also must cease and desist their infringements. Both claims come with a penalty of 30.000 euro per day with a maximum of 3 million euro."

BREIN doesn't seem to take much stock in the assumption that The Pirate Bay has been under different ownership since 2006 - the ruling is against Gottfrid Svartholm, Fredrik Neij and Peter Sunde. The three also must pay 42,000 Euro in procedural costs.

GGF got off light - they were only warned not to infringe on copyrights if - or when - they become the new owners.

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