Just weeks after four defendants involved in The Pirate Bay case were found guilty of breaching copyright, and with a court date of their own looming, the folks behind Mininova announced they've begun running a content recognition trial to detect and remove copyrighted material from the site. The system will also prevent said torrents from being re-uploaded to Mininova later on.
The mechanism was provided by the copyright holders themselves who want an easier way to get torrent files removed than the current DMCA takedown procedure. The collaboration does not mean they are off the hook from a court case against Dutch antipiracy organization BREIN later this month, but Mininova certainly hopes it will better their position. I wouldn't be surprised however to see them pay dearly for this move as users begin looking for torrents elsewhere.
The news isn't particularly encouraging for the torrent community. We've already seen several BitTorrent sites go down in recent years, including TorrentSpy and OinK, and now The Pirate Bay, Mininova, and isoHunt are all facing serious confrontations with the entertainment industry. No matter how hard the entertainment industry tries, though, some see the fight against piracy as useless - at least in its current form of opposing technologies like P2P rather than embracing them and adapting their obsolete business models.