@Home Cuts Newsgroups Due to DMCA Complaints

hobb writes: "This is interesting... According to a post to athome.announce, Excite@Home is deciding to pull a bunch of newsgroups due to DMCA violations. Sure, the group names listed suggest possible violations, but it seems quite sudden. I wonder who might be pressuring them... The posting reads [...]" The posting is reproduced below. We don't have access to athome.* newsgroups from the outside world, so if any readers are @Home subscribers, feel free to comment...

Due to violations of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) the Usenet newsgroups listed below are being discontinued from the Excite@Home news feed.

They are being removed from all of the news servers nationally ASAP.

alt.binaries.hustler
alt.binaries.playgirl
alt.binaries.penthouse
alt.binaries.movies
alt.binaries.pictures.centerfolds.playboy
alt.binaries.movies.divx
alt.binaries.movies.purity
alt.binaries.movies.shadowrealm
alt.binaries.movies.shadowrealm.repost
alt.binaries.movies.mirage-mrg

Comments

Here's why they did it

[Roblimo]

Read the Appeals Court's decision in ALS SCAN INC v REMARQ COMMUNITIES at http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/4th/001351.html and you'll see why they pulled those particular newsgroups.

If you get Web Hosting Magazine, I have an article in the next issue (July) about the DMCA's effects on ISPs and Hosting Services, and how they should handle DMCA complaints.

(No, I can't post a link to the story. It's a *print* magazine, and that issue isn't out yet. Sorry.)

- Robin

Re:Legality of Usenet Groups

[FFFish]

And how did you know which groups had kiddie porn in them?

You must have been viewing them.

Which means you were downloading and looking at kiddie porn.

Which is illegal.

Catch-22.

--

blocking newsgroups flawed

[bhendrickson]

The idea of "blocking a newsgroup" is appealing only to people with a flawed understanding of how the usenet works. @Home's action will only increase copyright violations.

Newsgroups are not like organizations that can be shutdown. They are not meeting spot that can be closed. A newsgroup is a higher level classification of subject than the normal subject line. That is it.

So "blocking a newsgroup" shouldn't be thought of as "shutting a newsgroup down", but rather removing a classification people can identify messages as. Making it so people can't indicate their post of "dog.jpg" is illegal bestiality by posting it to "alt.binaries.pictures.bestiality" means people looking for dog pictures for school in "alt.binaries.pictures" will end up downloading it.

So what does @homes latest actions do? It makes it so people who want to respect copyright laws won't know that a picture from "alt.binaries.erotic.pictures" violates Hustler's copyright. So now porn websites that get their content from the usenet are more likely to accidentally violate Hustler's copyright!

Ben

Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.

[mrsam]

If my memory serves me correctly, some years ago Prodigy was sued over some defamatory content that was posted to their online service. They lost the suit primarily because the plaintiff was able to demonstrate that because Prodigy excersized some form of editorial control over their online content. The judge ruled that because Prodigy edited some their published content, they automatically assumed liability for ALL of their published content.

Go ahead, and let @Home fold like a cheap camera a few more times, bending over backwards and taking it up the ass from MPAA and RIAA. Then, someone's gonna defame someone else on their newsgroup, and @Home will get sued. They'll certainly try to claim that some act that was passed a few years ago (the name escapes me) exempted ISPs from liability for published content. But I think that by instead excersizing editorial control a succesful argument can be made that @Home has assumed the role of a publisher, like Prodigy did. They can't have it both ways: claim that they're an ISP, a passive conduct, and cannot be liable for content carried on their service, but then turn around and excersize editorial control over the same content.

It's just a matter of time before they get nailed on this.

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Re:what the hell does that have to with the DMCA?

[Sloppy]

Now if this really has something to do with the DMCA, would somebody kindly explain that here.

DMCA has a lot more in it than the hideous 1201(a). One of the things that it covers is liability for middlemen, it kinda replaces the old-style "common carrier" rules that used to apply to ISPs. It mostly makes sense from a someone-must-be-accountable point of view, but is a bit unpleasant because it has some guilty-until-proven-innocent thinking in it.

Basically (I'm kinda summarizing and talking out of my ass at the same time, you might want to actually look it up), if you think someone is violating your copyright, and there's some kind of server being use by the offender (in this case, NNTP servers, in other cases, it might be web servers, etc), then instead of going after the actual copyright violator, you can go after the server. Once the copyright owner tells the server owner that a violation is taking place, the server owner has to shut down the content, whether or not the act of copyright violation has actually been verified. If they don't act after being notified of the infringement, then they become liable.

Then once the alleged violator realizes that their web page has been taken down, their usenet post cancelled, etc, they can write to the server owner and say, "No, it ain't copyright violation" and then the server can start serving the content again, but now the alleged violator's ass is on the line. (Presumably, this cannot be done anonymously. The idea is that it should always be clear exactly what party is to blame, should it turn out to be actual infringement.)

Probably what happened in this case is that some porno magazine threated the ISP so the ISP pulled those groups. It's not so much a "DMCA violation" as a regular old-fashioned copyright violation, combined with a DMCA "process."

---

Re:Learn to X-post

[Black Parrot]

> Hell, most of the content on those groups is pr0n site advertising anyway. ... Or so I've been told.

After many hours of careful research I can say that, yes, most of the posts to alt.binaries.* are pr0n-spam.

It was nasty work, but someone had to do it. I'm about to launch my newsreader now, to see whether the situation has changed since last night.


--

Re:Uh oh

[Tackhead]

> Or you could keep using your cable company for passin' the packets, and use someone else's servers for usenet.

Problem is, that's still a helluvalotta traffic for your ISP.

Full feed - 250GB per day. Let's assume you have 10000 users downloading 100M per day out of it. That 250G transit gives your users 1 TB (1 million megabytes) of downloads in the aggregate - but the 1TB of traffic is all on your LAN, so you don't have to pay (or otherwise make nicey-nicey with your Tier-1 pier ;-) for it. You eat 250G of transit costs to grab it to your disk farm and serve it locally.

But instead the PHBs tell you to dump your USENET server. Now you've got 10000 users subscribing to a premium USENET service to slurp down the binaries. The whole damn terabyte now comes from outside your network and onto your users' drives. You pay four times as much for transit as you used to in the USENET days.

For some things (MP3s of obscure bands), it may not matter -- you won't typically have all 10000 users downloading the same stuff.

For other things (e.g., this October, when Star Wars gets DivX'ed ;-), it may make a lot of difference - everyone is gonna be after the same 600M binary, so wouldn't you rather pay the transit for it once, rather than for every user who grabs a copy?

The picture makes a lot more sense if you stop thinking of the binary part of USENET as "USENET" and start thinking of it as a very large caching server.

Prediction: Imminent death of USENET predicted within 24 hours of the release of "Star Wars". Film at... er, part of film at October, with reposts of other parts of film through November, December, and probably most of 2002.

Whose the "bad guy"?

[krystal_blade]

The sites listed almost all have copyrighted/trademark names, and indeed, are fairly self explanatory in exactly WHAT it is they are distributing.

Technically, blocking those isn't censorship. It's simply following the law.

For the flamers out there (!gay "flamers) who think that so and so, or this and that need to "make a stand against the DMCA!!" Think about this...

A company, or individual who flaunts the law has a harder time enforcing their rights BY LAW. It's been proven. It goes something like this: if these guys had said "screw that, were not going to block it, despite the legalities of it" they may, or may not have had to go to court to defend their right. But, when/if they DID have to go to court for something else, their not wanting to follow along with the law's intent would show.

And, if by going to court, they were FORCED to pull those groups, that would set a legal precedent for EVERY ISP across the nation, and they would be forced to pull them too. It is seldom that a recent ruling is set aside for an individual.

If you want to fight the DMCA, or this, write your congressmen. Don't sit there and lament when this happens. It's not their fault, it's the fault of the American Voter, period. Use your rights. Don't expect a company to fight YOUR good fight.

krystal_blade "I want my karma back!"

Re:Soon to be banned...

[Tomcow2000]

And then alt.flame.spelling :)

Soon to be banned...

[6EQUJ5]

alt.binaries.first_ammendment

alt.binaries.second_ammendment

alt.binaries.fourth_ammendment

....