Mininova, one of the biggest torrent file-sharing websites in the world, has removed links to all copyrighted content that it does not have official agreements for.

The most surprising thing about this story, is that it is news.  However, Thursday’s move is a win for the entertainment industry as users of the site are now cut off from a major source of television shows, music, movies and other copyrighted content. The victory is likely to be short-lived, though, as peer-to-peer file sharers move on to other torrent sites and new technology.

Mininova, which was founded in 2005 in the Netherlands by five students, made the concession as the result of a court case brought forward by BREIN, a Dutch anti-piracy group. In June, a judge ruled that Mininova was not directly responsible for copyright infringement but ordered the website to remove links to such torrents within three months or face a fine of up to 5 million euros.

In the U.S., we call that “contributory infringement” and it’s the theory that essentially ended Napster. (Napster lives on as a Best Buy company that has copied the business model of Rhapsody.com.)

The question now becomes:  what mode will folks use to rip off content? Will it be the more distributed peer-to-peer torrent network?  Or will the entertainment industry take the initiative to innovate, using a model that permits more content to be accessible by folks who want it?  Like the innovative collaboration between Netflix and Tivo:

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