Newsgroups & legal action

[Aabidano]

Winnow mentioned the only legal proceedings he'd heard of involved kiddie fiddlers, no idea, don't follow it.

Sueven can likely correct me; as I understand if you can be reasonably shown to have not protected your rights to X, winning a later lawsuit when someone does use whatever it is in a manner you don't like becomes very difficult. Exactly the situation the MPAA is in here, and lots of other (seemingly) lawsuit happy companies. Which isn't to o say that there aren't many lawsuit trolls out there.

For that reason, I think it's just a matter of time before they do something. Given their track record, attacking their customers wouldn't be amazing.

[Canelek]

Given that possibility, wouldn't VPN + p2p torrents be better?

[Aabidano]

Done properly it would protect you as a user.

A "pure" p2p setup with no centralization at all would seem safe, then only whoever is creating\providing the software is taking the risk & liability.

[Canelek]

That is what I was thinking. Plus, removing the trackers, which is simple enough to do per torrent in uTorrent. I VPN using Astrill via Montreal or Los Angeles for torrents.

[Aslanna]

There has been a case where they went after a provider back in 2007 (Usenet.com) which was pretty open about what they were doing and also did some fairly shady things in regards to the lawsuit:

Original lawsuit

Outcome 2 years later

Usenet.com also resorted to stonewalling legal questionnaires, sending employees to Europe to avoid depositions, wiping hard drives, and failing to turn over e-mail after being sued in 2007 by the music labels.

The recording industry's high-octane litigation campaign has on many occasions suffered from "poor targeting," but it's hard to see any complexities in this case. When Usenet.com employees privately suggested that the service's tag line should be "piracy, porno, and pictures —Usenet," "Usenet is full of music and movies so get your pirate on!," or "Bless the Usenet and all that it steals!," it's clear they knew why people were paying $4.95 to $18.95 a month for the privilege of accessing the newsgroups. And not only did they know, they allegedly took steps to encourage the infringement.

It would have been interesting to see what would have come of it if they weren't so shady they were denied the "Safe Harbor" defense.

Regardless, it does not seem like any legal action came against the users in that action.

I'm not saying it wouldn't happen but I don't ever seem them going after users it's more efficient to just have that provider shut down. People who post shit that's a different story. Didn't Nintendo get someone not that long ago for posting Super Mario Galaxy 2 in newsgroups? Maybe even before it was out. Nintendo also seems good at getting posts nuked. Some Nintendo games are nearly impossible to find unless you nab them within a day or two of being posted.

If the RIAA/MPAA were smart they'd buyout a Usenet provider (or startup their own), turn on logging and let it run for a year or two, then sort through all the data and present it to the feds. Even then users utilizing SSL and VPN not sure they'd get everyone although I'm sure a large portion don't really take any precautions.

[Fairweather Pure]

Get it while you can. One day you'll be telling your kids what the Internet used to be like.

[Canelek]

No shit, right?

And once they figure out how to shut piratebay down, finding non-newsgroup torrents will be back to the dice-rolling for torrents just after suprnova got killed.

[Winnow]

For torrent lovers, demonoid seems to be going strong still.

I prefer usenet when possible.

[Funkmasterr]

Demonoid seems to be going strong? As far as I know, they are being messed with by the CRIAA right now, which prompted them to quick pull down all their systems and cause the hardware issues they are having.

From what I've read, people from the U.S. and Canadia can't use demonoid anymore.. I haven't tried to use demonoid in a while though so I'm not sure.

[Winnow]

Well they were going strong a week ago!

Sucks to be torrent users!

[Canelek]

Piratebay is fine for now. I'd only switch to newsgroups if PB or demonoid became defunct. I really don't want to pay an additional monthly for now since I am about to do a major renovation.

[Aabidano]

Related yabbering on slashdot:
http://yro.slashdot.org/firehose.pl?op= ... 08/1756201

[Siji]

Demonoid is now working fine, btw.

[Aslanna]

Major Usenet Provider Ordered to Remove All Infringing Content

Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN has won its landmark court case against News-Service.com, one of the leading Usenet providers. The Amsterdam court ruled that the Usenet provider, which offers its network to Binverse and Usenext among others, has to delete all infringing content from its servers. This decision is similar to the one that effectively shut down the BitTorrent site Mininova, and it could mean the end of one of the leading providers of Usenet access.

Two years ago BREIN, representing the movie and music industries, took News-Service.com (NSE) to court.

The group demanded that the Usenet provider delete all infringing content from its servers, and today the Court of Amsterdam sided with the copyright holders.

In an unprecedented verdict the court ruled that NSE has to remove all copyrighted content within four weeks, or pay 50,000 euros ($68,000) in fines per day. The court states that NSE willingly facilitates copyright infringement through its services.

NSE argued that are simply transmitting content, much like an Internet provider does. However, the court rejected this defense, adding that a notice and takedown procedure is insufficient to protect the rightsholders.

The decision could have far-reaching consequences for many other Internet services, starting with NSE resellers such as Binverse and Usenext..

“We are very disappointed with the Court’s verdict. It is technically as well as economically unfeasible to check the contents of the 15 to 20 million messages that are exchanged on a daily basis. Added to which, there is no automated way of checking whether Usenet messages contain copyrighted material or whether permission has been obtained for the distribution of such material,” NSE CEO Patrick Schreurs said in a comment.

“We see no way of complying with this verdict. Furthermore, the verdict endangers our very existence as a company, and is thus a threat to Usenet itself, as the facilitation of Usenet services has become impossible on the grounds of this verdict. The exchange of messages by means of this oldest of Internet services has de facto become impossible,” he adds.

The Usenet provider is currently considering whether it should appeal the decision.

BREIN is delighted with the verdict of the court, which is very similar to the one that signaled the end of the BitTorrent site Mininova two years ago.

“It is a breakthrough step to further dismantle the availability of illegal content on Usenet,” director Tim Kuik responded.

There is little doubt that the verdict of the Amsterdam Court is going to have a huge impact on the Usenet market, and the question has to be asked where it will stop. Could file-hosting services like MegaUpload and RapidShare be next? And what about other cloud hosting services such as Dropbox?

For now, however, NSE is faced with the impossible task of finding a way to identify and delete all copyrighted files from its servers

Well that's an interesting way to attack the issue. Make them close up by passing down an impossible to comply with ruling.

[Winnow]

Not good!

Seems like a bullshit verdict. I'd appeal it. That's like telling a Internet Service Provider to not allow copyright material to be transferred. There's no way to comply since files can be named anything. How are any storage service providers supposed to know what a file contains? I can see this verdict getting shut down as soon as it starts impacting Amazon, Dropbox, etc. If it's allowed, the internet will become severely restricted soon, with even little blogs getting shut down for posting pictures in news stories, etc.

Oh well, if it gets ugly, there's always going back to the old school days with hidden ftp sites, temp storage sites you need to hunt down, etc.

/temp/./user/trash/apz/.zeroday

It would be kinda fun to make it challenging again.

[Aabidano]

Well that's an interesting way to attack the issue. Make them close up by passing down an impossible to comply with ruling.

My guess is the judge looked at the stated reason for existence vs. what all the customers actually pay them for. I suspect during the court case an infinitesimally small portion of the binary content was found to be legal. Their entire business case is based on illegal activity.