Ethical Torrent Site TNTVillage Pressured by Italian Media and Publishing Giants

• Italian torrent website that is known for its “ethical” torrents is facing legal pressure from the media industry.
• The website was launched to offer Italians a means of access to art, culture and intellectual works that are otherwise not accessible.
• All of the files shared on the platform are non-profit and are transferred via peer-to-peer networks.

TNTVillage is an Italian “ethical” torrent website that was launched in 2005 as a platform for providing access to the country’s cultural and intellectual works and art. The website is fully non-profit and according to one of the operators of the website “The main aim of this site was to highlight the now obsolete copyright law, which, due to the long duration of the protection of these rights, turns out to be a brake on culture and the spread of knowledge.”

The websites operators wanted a change in the country’s law to allow easier access to content online, especially works that were difficult to get access to. TNTVillage has strict rules about publishing and even waits months to publish any artistic work to not hurt the earning potential of creators.

Image Courtesy of TorrentFreak

Over a dozen media groups including the Edi. Ermes, Italian Publishers Association, Eagle Pictures, Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Multimedia Content (FAPAV), and many others are now targeting Associazione Scambio Etico (Ethical Exchange Association), the association behind TNTVillage. Operator Luigi Di Liberto has been named specifically in a legal complaint.

The companies going after TNTVillage claim that the BitTorrent technology which is being used by the torrent website violates copyrights and damages businesses that support creators. Italian legal authorities were sent to Di Liberto’s house for a search and examination procedure. His hard disks have been seized. It is not the first time the website has faced legal pressure, and the website has been taken down temporarily. If the torrent website is unable to defend itself in a court of law, users may no longer be able to use the peer-to-peer sharing platform anymore.

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