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MPAA Ignores Usenet, Goes After Bittorrent
mjeppsen writes "The Motion Picture Association of America is turning a blind eye towards movie piracy on Usenet, going after torrent link sites instead. PC Magazine says it is because the studios are in bed with GUBA, who is also shilling downloadable movies for the MPAA at a premium price."
The article misses a major point.
The MPAA is perfectly free to choose who to go after. If they choose to allow GUBA to continue (at least for now), that is their right. It doesn't take away from their valid position to protect their copyrights.
As an aside, I had never heard of GUBA before this. I may have to look into it...
It's just easier to find and sue torrent abusers.
So right there, Guba has some sort of DRM system in place that keeps people from just watching any movie at any time - and since they use the Usenet archives at times to snag their movies, the MPAA doesn't have to worry about "clean" copies - they'll still get paid for crappy Usenet archive copies that Joe Geek ripped from the DVD.
But there's something else that Guba offers as well: tracking of content. Does Hollywood want to know what movie might be a good pick? What if there's been a lot of traffic in "Santa Claus versus the Martians", and it's pretty constant - maybe rereleasing the DVD will make some cash.
Either way, the selective nature of just what the MPAA will go after and what they won't is rather interesting. I read through the artcle which seemed to show pretty clearly that the MPAA can ignore copyright violation when it wants to. Anyone else have a better idea than I why that may be?
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Not to mention that it's not like they're not bringing cases. All they have to say is "We intend to go after other sites later, we've got out hands full with dozens or hundreds of lawsuits already now".
So the MPAA Are behaving in a way that possibly harms the MPAA and nobody else. Why should we bully them into behaving differently?
Because, as the saying goes, when you critize somebody's personal hygiene, you'd better make sure you smell nice yourself.
In other words, the MPAA can't go about suing people right and left for piracy and copyright infringement and behave differently when said people are their buddies. They're just not credible.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I think the MPAA doesn't care about Usenet is because the Usenet that is provied "free" by ISP's sux in a major way. Anyone with Earthlink or TimeWarner can confirm that even with PAR2 files, there is simply not enough left of just about any rar to reassemble the archive. Too many pieces just disappear.
I guess GigaNews still isn't big enough to attract the attention of the MPAA. I hope GigaNews wouldn't give up the user's data without a fight anyway.
Also, one person posts on usenet and there are many free "anonymous" posting servers out there. Several people download. Getting the uploaders is more important to the RI/MP-AA than the leachers/lurkers. With bittorrent, nearly eveyone who downloads also uploads so all users are just as guilty.
Finally, the IP addresses of the users are easier to find via torrent than they are via usenet.
There is no "I disagree" mod for a reason. Flamebait, Troll, and Overrated are not substitutes.
The Usenet as an MPAA profit center? I don't buy it.
So, there's no way that if the MPAA knows the full scope of the Usenet, that they would be making enough money off of GUBA to offset the perceived losses of keeping the Usenet in operation.
Here's a better explanation: to crack down on the Usenet, the MPAA would have to put pressure on the ISPs who provide Usenet connectivity as part of their plans. ISPs don't like reducing the value of their services by limiting features (it makes it harder to justify their monthly rate hikes). And the MPAA needs to be friendly with the ISPs to keep getting those juicy log files.
So it's not that they like the Usenet, it's just that they don't have a way to shut it off, yet.
perl -e 'foreach(values %SIG){$_="IGNORE";}while(){}'
Lets be honest, the real reason they aren't going after it is that usenet is little known outside of IT circles and is pretty user unfriendly (at least to a layman).
It is by the juice of the coffee bean that thoughts acquire speed, the teeth acquire stains. The stains become a warning
You have it right. Though I don't think copyright is settled in the digital realm (everyone HAS to make a copy to use the media!), I think that it is generally accepted that the person who presents the material will be the infringer. The best non-digital analogy would be that the authorities would go after the guy in the subway who sells bootleg DVDs, not the buyers of the bootleg DVDs. It is also generally accepted that for message boards to be possible, screening cannot be compulsory. Even Slashdot could be used to share copyrighted material - or even binaries! You cannot expect Slashdot to review every post for infringement. Usenet, though used for binaries through clever hacks, is really just a big, mostly unmoderated text message board.
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Igor Presnyakov stole my hat
When a movie/music files/whatever posted to Usenet, there is only one distributor/publisher of the questionable content. When someone downloads questionable content via BitTorrent, they are simultaneously taking on the role of downloader and distributor/publisher. If the *AA wants to go after those distributing/illegitimiately publishing their content, they'll find a lot more potential targets for litigation. Even if they went after individual Usenet servers who carry the groups and posts containing copyrighted material, the pool of BitTorrent users is simply larger.
Also, these days, I'd wager that there are more simply people downloading via BitTorrent than binaries newsgroups, given the lower learning curve and generally faster download speeds.
"All that and I still firmly believe that the only reason USENET hasn't been shut down is because its too good a source of leads for catching Child Abusers/Child Pornographers"
That's a pretty narrow view of what Usenet is, considering that it's a lot more than just porn,warez, and movies.
Over the years, it's been a great repository of information, and the exchange thereof.
Saying that it's only around to catch kiddy porn purveyors, is at the very least, uninformed.
Bittorrent only requests and exchanges parts or chunks of a file.
I guess it's enough to get you a lawsuit, but on the other hand even being associated with an IP address is now enough to get you sued. So, it really matters anyway. Somebody could be sending out packets with your IP address saying you're a BT client with the movie.
But, you're right. Bittorrent was mostly designed for speed of download and not privacy.
I know you were being sarcastic, but of course not. They wouldn't support anything that stops them from downloading the "shit" (which they so willingly download and consume) the RIAA/MPAA member companies make.
By summer it was all gone...now shesmovedon. --
Just fill in the target's name and send it via recorded delivery.
Well, that may have been true when the paper was written, but I'm not sure it's all that true now. If you want to participate in usenet, you have to sign up for an account with a profit-driven, centralized entity. That profit-driven, centralized entity had to spend quite a bit of money, time and effort setting up a datacenter that can retain all that data and sustain the bandwidth that their clients eat up (I still can't figure out the economics of how news providers can afford to stay in business, much less make a profit, at $12/month or so), so they're not exactly "fly by night" organizations ... they seem pretty regulable to me. I think that at this point if they really wanted to shut it down or censor it, they would.
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When they're on their death beds will they look back on their lives and say "I'm glad I never kissed a girl, it was much more fun watching the latest Hollywood bullshit, then bitching about it, and all for free, hahahalolroflmao..."