RIAA Sues Usenet.com

Several readers pointed us to Torrentfreak's coverage of the RIAA's latest move: the major record labels have launched a copyright infringement lawsuit against Usenet.com. The complaint, filed in the federal District Court in New York, accuses Usenet.com of providing access to millions of copyright-infringing files and slams it for touting its service as a "haven for those seeking pirated content." Usenet.com has been refusing the labels' requests to block access to alleged "copyright infringing groups."

GG RIAA

[visualight]

Now everyone will know about usenet and how to access it.

Re:Ahh crap

[Threni]

Took 'em years to get around to Usenet, though. Why? Perhaps they've only just heard about it?

Two very silly companies

[jdub_dub]

Well, it kinda serves them right... making money off the freely-accessible Usenet.

But at the same time, it's kinda pointless. Suing the freely-accessible Usenet??

Flawed logic?

[flogger]

If usenet is at fault, then phone companies are at fault for every "bad thing" discussed over the airware or landlines.

Please

[blhack]

Please, for the love of god, don't let this story go any further....please nobody post this to digg, or reddit, or any other place that will get it even more publicity. What the MAFRIAA wants is for all of us to be up in arms, and if we get the 14 year old ZOMFG HACK-ZORES on the case that is exactly what will happen.

usenet will go the way of bittorrent.

NOthing to see here folks, move along. /quickly now //QUICKLY!

Okay, newbies, usenet.com is NOT usenet

[SmallFurryCreature]

Geez, what is this, digg? usenet.com is just a company that gives payed access to usenet. The RIAA can't sue usenet anymore then it could sue HTTP (not that it wouldn't want to) but it sure as hell can sue Usenet.com the same as it can sue a company employing a webserver that hosts copyrighted files.

I have no idea if usenet.com can be considered guilty under current laws, they do have the files in question on their servers and charge people money to download them, so they are directly profitting from these files. On the other hand, by the nature of usenet they have no control over what appears on their servers (they better not be blocking kiddie porn or they lost that defence).

Are they a phone company just passing information, or are they a filesharer profitting from doing so.

Intresting case BUT stop pretending that the RIAA is stupid enough to sue USENET, it is sueing a company that sells access to usenet. People here are quick to blame politicians for not knowing enough, but count the posts that don't even seem to know the difference between these two.

Re:Ahh crap

[Otter]

Why? Perhaps they've only just heard about it?

Usenet.com isn't Usenet.* It's a Usenet access provider that markets itself pretty transparently (although not transparently enough to be illegal, I'd guess) as a warez service.

* Translation for all you "my hello.c is so 1337!" dweebs: Usenet.com != Usenet

Re:Ahh crap

[Anonymous Coward]

Probably because they can't track who is using it as easily as P2P programs or torrents. To go after users will require them to get logs from the providers, which won't happen without a subpoena. Also, it seems like they're going after Usenet.com because they were branding their service as a way to get copies of content. I wonder if they will go after other providers, who are advertising the ability to have 20GB/month worth of conversations with other usenet users, but make no mention of copyrighted material that is available?

Re:I warned you people!!

[Chapter80]

your theoretical right to download a copyrighted britney spears album is equivalent to Auschwitz how exactly?

I think you missed the joke. [wikipedia.org]

Re:Flawed logic?

[droopycom]

Actually, usenet.com (like any host taking part of the usenet network) is actually hosting the content.

Many usenet host (in universities or ISP) do not store binary groups (just because it take too much space on their servers). But some ISP do, and just turn a blind eye on the piracy, because they know they will attract more customers.

Thats what make it so attractive for pirated content: this are professional grade servers on the other side.

I'm surprised it took RIAA/MPAA so long to go after them.

Re:Two very silly companies

[fimbulvetr]

I don't think you're emphasizing enough just how much bandwidth a newsgroup infrastructure consumes. Once you're doing binaries, and dabbling in 99% retention for any amount of days, you have yourself tremendous bandwidth and server requirements (IO/Spindles, mainly) that could quickly turn an ISPs profit into the red if they decided to keep doing it and not charge for some tiers of service.

The basic stuff like the text, completion and retention is hard enough without binaries. This is why most places (Comcast, et. al.) outsource their newsgroups to giganews - the barrier to entry is substantial.

RIAA to sue Al Gore

[tjstork]

Al Gore, inventor of the Internet, is now the defendant in a 400 billion dollar lawsuit filed by RIA.

Not allowed

[OrangeTide]

Shutting down Usenet violates my right to free speech. It would be like making paper and pens illegal.

It really is a common carrier and it has been providing unregulated wide open free speech for decades. The first, and still maybe the best, for free speech on the internet.

Re:The average user does not know about usenet

[sycotic]

heh, you also need to remember that RIAA stands for recording industry association of AMERICA and as such this is really just a storm in a continent

the rest of the world will go about their daily business unaware of all of this jibber jabber from some group of american suits

they can filter all they like in their country, it should not affect the rest of us

this is of course all assuming that there are decent usenet servers outside the united states of america, which we know there are

Re:Not allowed

[Anonymous Coward]

They won't "shut down" usenet. Likely your internet provider will drop binaries support as an end-all to lawsuits.

Re:Ahh crap-DISMANTLE ONE SERVER AT A TIME

[Nom du Keyboard]

Usenet.com isn't Usenet.* It's a Usenet access provider that markets itself pretty transparently (although not transparently enough to be illegal, I'd guess) as a warez service.

Don't think that Usenet.com is not usenet, and therefore usenet is safe. By now you should know that the RIAA tries to take one case against a weak defendant, and then leverage that win in the courts against everyone else. If they can win against Usenet.com and their servers, expect legal letters to go out to every other usenet node telling them to shut down, filter groups (yeah, like that would work), or face a lawsuit against a billion dollar corporation.

This really is a big deal on a new front, and if they don't lose big time here, they'll try to roll over everyone else.

The truth is that the RIAA truly believes that they are more important than absolutely everybody else in the world!

Re:I've seen the trickle down effects of piracy

[Anonymous Coward]

Why stop at blaming usenet.com? How about the bandwidth providers or the internet providers? How about the computer company that makes the equipment these people are using? How about the blank CD makers? How about the cd drives that play these cds. How about the people posting the copyrighted material? How about the people that are downloading the copyrighted material?

Everyone of those listed above are required for your competition to get free copyrighted content.

I am not encouraging copyright violations but in all honesty, the two dollars a track is your problem.

Please *do* talk about Usenet

[tskirvin]

Text-based Usenet is a useful service. More people should use it; it does a better job of allowing discussion than most web forums out there, and there's little threat of centralized control over the discussion.

I've been tempted to make comp.internet.services.news.slashdot in the Big-8 [big-8.org]...

Google Groups

[Nom du Keyboard]

How long before they take on Google Groups? (And why didn't any of the posters above beat me to this Insightful +5 thought?)

Hey RIAA, why not go pick on someone your own size? Google Groups probably does more with usenet than anyone else. But right? They actually have real lawyers, and your case is a crock if it was ever challenged by an equally financed opponent.

Re:I've seen the trickle down effects of piracy

[Overzeetop]

I don't think anyone is really interested in protecting your competitors. Quite honestly...turn them in if you think their collection is pirated. I presume that you don't really care if I have a personal collection of karaoke tracks I've downloaded from the usenet^wsomewhere, because my basement "bar" doesn't really compete with you. In fact, if I get my friends involved in karaoke, they're more likely to do it in public...say, at your club.

Taking stuff off usenet and re-selling it in bulk (which is what the "other" clubs may be doing) is a commercial use of the material, and it pretty lousy. I have a real hard time saying that folks trolling the 'net for some personal karaoke fetish is really a huge deal (karaoke publishers may disagree).

FWIW, I don't have any karaoke. I hate karaoke, to be honest; mostly because I can't stand out-of-tune singers, even when I am drunk. I don't participate because I don't use my voice to sing on a regular basis and, like any instrument, it is not in the best shape.

Oh, and for what it's worth, although you may find $300k an exorbitant amount to spend, for some of these retired electrical engineers (or whatever) they just want it all, and will drop "stupid" money on their pet projects. They'll probably go out of business when the market turns a bit thin again. If you're still around, you might even be able to buy their collection at firesale prices.

Usenet is pretty vulnerable.

[Kadin2048]

Yep. Not only that -- the massive storage and bandwidth -- but you need to get a newsfeed. And that's not as easy as it used to be, when you could basically ask the sysop of your local university nicely. I'm not even sure what the commercial news servers would charge for a real UUCP newsfeed, or if they'd sell you one at all (why would they want to create competition for themselves?).

I'm not sure how many high-completion, long-retention news servers are around, but I suspect it's way, way down from what it used to be. It probably wouldn't take too many targeted lawsuits to, if not actually wipe out Usenet (that's impossible), but to at least make it very different from what it's like now. You could definitely make commercial services unprofitable, push it underground, and force people to eliminate binaries or at least shorten their completion/retentions a lot.

Re:Ahh crap

[budgenator]

back in the day they used to say the way to really destroy the Soviet Union was to spend the money for one B1 bomber toshiba laptops with unix installed and drop them instead of bombs, the Russians would be networked in one week via UUCP and the free flow of information would destroy the soviets. They also said that dopping the manuals would kill more soviets that atomic bombs would.

Re:Ahh crap-DISMANTLE ONE SERVER AT A TIME

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

The truth is that the RIAA truly believes that they are more important than absolutely everybody else in the world!

The truth is that the RIAA truly believes that everybody else in the world owes them a debt, thanks to all the piracy that's interspersed throughout the world.

Re:Ahh crap

[Korin43]

I think the point is that Usenet.com doesn't just have copywrited music, it's a major part of their advertising. Like if phone companies advertised as "A great way to plan terrorist attacks!" or something. (not that I think they should lose, I just think that it's more complicated than people are making it)

Re:I've seen the trickle down effects of piracy

[kindbud]

So by your +5 Interesting logic, if instead you had a clothing store and your competition was selling counterfeit designer labels and hurting your business, the proper response response by the designer would be to sue the trucking company that delivered the counterfeit clothing?

Re:Ahh crap-DISMANTLE ONE SERVER AT A TIME

[D-Cypell]

Yup, and computer nerds that new at design-time that an elegant design can solve problems not yet even considered.

It seems that the mechanism built into technologies like usenet that were designed to prevent a single point of failure, will also defend us against a single point of law suit as well.

Re:Ahh crap-DISMANTLE ONE SERVER AT A TIME

[shark72]

"The truth is that the RIAA truly believes that they are more important than absolutely everybody else in the world!"

When it comes to protecting the rights of their members, yeah. The AMA is more important than everybody else in the world regarding the interests of the doctors who are its members; the Ferret Protection Society is more important than anybody else in the world when it comes to ferret rights, and so on.

Pick a cause, and you'll find somebody who's defending it. Even causes we don't like.

Re:I warned you people!!

[houstonbofh]

Invoking Hitler to end an argument doesn't even work on usenet anymore. Sigh... End of an era...

The Dark Age Reloaded

[RealBorg]

If the MAFIAA is allowed to pursue their Jihad, we will sooner than later wake up in a world where modern technology is outlawed, just because it could be used to infringe on their right to rip off consumers.

P2P Networks, the Usenet, HTTP, e-mail,... could all be used for unauthorized distribution. Cassette, video recorders and cameras could be used for unauthorized copying. Radio and TV could be used to listen to unauthorized broadcasts. Outlaw them all and you are back in the moyen age.

Re:Ahh crap-DISMANTLE ONE SERVER AT A TIME

[delt0r]

I can't remember who said it or the exact quote, but its something like this:

"The internet treats censorship like any other error, and routes around it."

On another note, the spam levels and trolls in usenet are so high, I find that its not really all the usable. (my killfile was huge)

Toothpaste out of tube

[flyneye]

Toothpaste's out of the tube.No going back.
The music industry is dead.Watch it's muscles twitch as it files useless lawsuit after lawsuit.
Long Live Open Source music licensing.Long live a level playing field for musicians.
To quote an old trusted pundit.
"oh don't you judge a book just by the cover
unless you cover just another
and blind acceptance is a sign
of stupid fools who stand in line
like
e.m.i. e.m.i. e.m.i.
unlimited edition
with an unlimited supply
that was the only reason
we all had to say goodbye"

You know what to do.You've been doing it so well.
drive another nail in the coffin of the industry.
God Bless Usenet.