About

News-Service Europe B.V. (NSE) was founded in 1998 and was a successful Dutch usenet provider established in Amsterdam, with an international group of customers. NSE provided wholesale usenet services to businesses, such as usenet resellers and internet providers.

At the end of 2011 NSE was forced to cease all its activities due to a lost lawsuit filed by the BREIN foundation. This Dutch anti-piracy outfit is of the opinion that usenet providers infringe copyright and initiated proceedings against NSE in 2009. The Amsterdam District Court ruled in favor of BREIN and prohibited NSE from recording and making available copyrighted works, subject to a penalty of € 50,000 a day. Because it was technically impossible for NSE to comply with this order, it was forced to cease its activities. An appeal had been lodged in the meantime.

The appeal was won by NSE after a very lengthy proceeding. On December 6, 2016 the Amsterdam Court of Appeal ruled that NSE had not infringed copyright, that as an intermediary, NSE is not liable for the infringements made on its platform by others and that NSE did not act unlawfully.

Brein appealed this decision at the Dutch Supreme Court. This appeal is still pending.

The owners of NSE are Wierd Bonthuis and Patrick Schreurs. Patrick keeps a blog and regularly writes about the lawsuit. His blog can be found at blog.patschreurs.nl.