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Penthouse.com Goes After Usenet Posters
Shibumi writes: "
Penthouse.com is starting to pursue legal action against persons who post material to Usenet from their pay site." At least they're going after the poster and not the usenet servers.
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No Metallica mp3's, no Penthouse Pictures. It's starting to look like everything associated with the word 'wank' is being banned.
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...that's free as in handjobs, not free as in speech.
They have an interesting point that you don't hear from the music industry or software industry:
"Second, and equally important, is the fact that our pay site is an adult site. It is for adults only and we mean it. We take the responsibility of limiting access to our site and our content to adults very seriously."
You have to give them some credit there: with that one sentence, they actually got the parents on their side. For once, the liberals and Bobby G are on the same side!
What's your damage, Heather?
But I only post the articles honest...
"Do you think we could wipe out world hunger forever if scientists figured out how to make AOL's Free CD's edible?"-
Yes Metallica should go after the users trading the mp3 files, not after napaster. The users are commiting the crime, not Napaster.
Think about it, go into a head shop, buy a bong then go smoke some weed out of it. When Mr. Police Man sees you smoking pot, who is he going to arrest, you or the head shop.
What law did the head shop break? None. What law did Napaster break? None.
Did you break a law when you started smoking pot? Yes (At least under the current laws in the United States). Did you break a law when you started trading copyrighted mp3's? Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
Did usenet or [insert isp here] break any laws when they made there newsgroups public? No. Did you break any laws when you posted copyrighted porn to these news groups. Yes (At least under the current copyright laws in the United States).
So who is responiable you or the head shop? Who broke the law, you or the head shop? Who should get fined or put in jail, you or the head shop?
Napaster *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the company claims, as bongs and newsgroups *CAN* be used for legal purposes as what the companies claim.
You can used Napaster to trade legal mp3's (like self-written, self-produced material) as you can use both bongs (for smoking tobacco) and newsgroups (for posting self-produced material). All which are pretty legal.
Does anyone use these things for legal purposes though? No not really, maybe 0.00002 % of the entire population.
Please take responiablity for your actions, even if sometimes you actions are illegal and may laid you in jail.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
They are pursuing action against one single individual, who was COMPLETELY mirroring absolutely EVERYTHING in near realtime, from Penthouse's internal pay-site to Usenet.
Literally hours after being put up, shoots were appearing on Usenet.
In the time since the story (May 2) another person or two have taken up the 'mirroring'. I haven't heard whether he/they/(she?) have been brought to task yet or not.
Officials entered the subject's premises, which were then searched and all computer equipment and storage media found there were seized and placed under seal.
Why is it that they always sieze computer equipment in these cases? It strikes me as rather strange. I mean, if someone was distributing photocopies of a magazine from a car, then they wouldn't take the car off you after you had been caught, would they?
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This is really good IMHO. Not that people are stealing porn, or penthouse is showing off it's huge uh legal team, but they are doing it the right way.
See, they go after the poster, the one that commited the crime, slap him with a small fine and embrass the hell out of him so he doesn't do it again, penthouse gets from cash from it and everyone is happy.
If penthouse decided to go after the news group or hosting provided, this would be a bad thing almost as stupid as if Metallica went after Napaster instead of the users.
Metallica could learn a lot about the way penthouse is handling this. Like I said a million times before, dam Metallica really needs to get some porn and just fsck chill out.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -THHGTTG
for Rob to post a link to Penthouse!! I'm on to you Rob Malda........