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GUBA makes Usenet search easy as Google
ChipGuy writes "Despite the growing popularity of p2p networks,Usenet is the real treasure trove of multimedia content including vintage cartoons, westerns and popular television shows. Nearly two terabytes of data is added everyday to Usenet. GUBA, a seven year old San Francisco company is making it easier to find the information on Usenet through the browser. Its like " Google for Usenet," says this report."
Is this news? This site has been around for a long time. Why now on /.?
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The real difference is that P2P has a source, a bottleneck. You can shut down one group or one server and the problem goes away.
Usenet is almost as distributed as email, and just as old.
Shutting Usenet down will be like trying to catch a fart in the wind. You may get some of it, but you'll never get all of it, and it won't be easy.
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I think it's because they want to maintain common-carrier status.
If they start examining (and then restricting) what people post, then they open themselves up to lawsuits when they miss.
Besides, would it really stop anyone - people could just move the stuff to a different newsgroup.
The content owners know about this already. Two, maybe three years ago, I heard about a massive piracy ring going by the name of SD6 that operated on IRC and USENET. Seems that some of their members started getting C&Ds and other legal threats from the content owners, and they shut down their entire USENET group (knowing full well, of course, that the group itself would not disappear--but they apparently stopped all USENET operations).
So they know it's there. If they aren't actively working to stop it now, it's probably because your average user isn't going to be able to download thousands of messages, reassemble them into files, and (if it's a movie file) reassemble THOSE into the mpeg. Bittorrent is much easier as it's a single installation and then just clicky-clicky on the link to start downloading your file.
I'm sure they'll go after USENET eventually, after they've dealt with all the larger threats. But for now, I imagine you are safe. They may go after this company that seems to be caching and indexing the files, but I doubt they'll go after USENET itself for awhile yet.
As for indexing content on usenet, this has been done for quite some time. The more comprehensive (scariest) approach seems to be taken by the folks at Microsoft, evidence enough of why real names/email addresses should never be used. Also, there's sites like this one that people can use if they're so inclined. Whatever.
Personally, I think most web interfaces suck for searching, but only slightly less than downloading 500K headers in a binary group looking for something ... interesting. What would be ideal if Easynews et al. could just offer a big text dump of any group that could be grepped locally without the clicking and advancing page by page nonsense. Either way, publicity is Not a Good Thing for usenet, which has for years been A Really Good Thing. It's easy enough for anyone to create a new group and migrate there with everyone else (ad infinitum), but that's hardly a welcome idea.
I've always wondered why the RIAA doesn't go after this. I appreciate the structure of usenet means that the newsgroups can't be shut down, but surely they could sue ISPs and posters based in the US. Is there some technical or legal reason, or is usenet just too far away from the mainstream?
Two words: Common Carrier. It's the same reason the phone company can't be held liable for obscene phone calls. As long as you carry everything without blocking, you can be (legally) ignorant of what's there. The poster, however, can still be held liable. And posters have, in fact, been prosecuted for their usenet postings, generally for illegal content though, not copyright violations...