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."

Comments

Re:Please

[moore.dustin]

What way did bittorrent go exactly? My 'torrent use' has not been effected in the least from anything the RIAA or bittorrent themselves have done. As for usenet, even if it is shut down, only the name will take a hit. The whole community will reorganize 3 days later at a new domain, the same community, and a new vigor of secrecy. I mean really, the RIAA cannot do anything to stop us(Us being geeks/nerds). No matter what they do, we change our ways, improve our position against them(RIAA), and continue to do what we want, share files. Darknets and private trackers are already commonplace because of the RIAA - it just goes to show that the only thing that can control what the community does is the community itself.

Re:Ahh crap

[stefanlasiewski]

Don't confuse 'Usenet' with usenet.com. 'Usenet' is an internet-wide discussion system, with thousands of usenet nodes and of no central control.

Usenet.com provides paid access to Usenet newsgroups, and happened to land a nice DNS name.

Pointless

[jemenake]

If the RIAA's main complaint is that Usenet.com is offering access to alt.binaries.*, that's a little pointless. Now that NZB files are all the rage, the various pieces of each posting don't even have to be in one newsgroup, because the reference them by message-id. So, I could chop "Stairway to Heaven" into 20 pieces, post one piece to soc.singles, another piece to alt.flame, etc. etc... and then post the NZB somewhere and any NZB-aware program will be able to go get them. So... trying to shut off alt.binaries isn't going to stop anything.

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

[SomeJoel]

Most slashdotters that are against the RIAA/MPAA for their tactics would also be against the piracy you described. Typically, this community accepts "personal use" type file-sharing, where the song/movie is not then sold on the black market. In fact, the RIAA would be perfectly in the right to sue in this case. However, they should sue the pirating karaoke bars that are making profits because of piracy, not the medium from which they obtained them. Furthermore, they should not have to pay $220,000 per track in any case, but rather something more along the lines of actual loss (maybe a grand total of $300,000 as you cited in your example).

Re:Okay, newbies, usenet.com is NOT usenet

[Kjella]

It might come down to advertising. Selling a knife is legal. Selling a knife as "the perfect murder weapon" is not. There's a long and difficult story trying to figure this out, you can read Shooting the Messenger: ISP Liability for Contributory Copyright Infringement [pdf] for the 16-page brief summary. On the one hand you have the Sony vs Betamax shield (you can't control the users) on the other you have Grokster etc. (you can't advertise it as a pirating service). Some of the Usenet providers have been making ads that are dangerously close to inciting illegal activity. I think newsgroups will survive, I'm not sure usenet.com does.

Re:Ahh crap-DISMANTLE ONE SERVER AT A TIME

[Anonymous Coward]

This seems like it there may be a precedent for this case already:

http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2006dltr0019.html

Good Luck Riaa, Usenet servers are ISP's in law.

[plasmacutter]

to quote this informed poster from a previous usenet related infringement story.

The problem for the MPAA is that Usenet providers have been deemed to be 17 USC 512(a) service providers. That means they can't be successfully sued for copyright infringement for material traversing their networks, and they need not even respond to takedown notices for such material. Yep, it's their own law, the DMCA, working against them. Though before that law, the Netcom case left them pretty hamstrung anyway.

Let's hope Usenet.com has good lawyers who know about this.

Re:Ahh crap-DISMANTLE ONE SERVER AT A TIME

[TheoMurpse]

For those who don't want to take the time to read the "iBrief" (wtf?), it says that AOL's usenet service should not have qualified AOL under the safe harbor provisions. However, the article uses a very narrow interpretation of the definition of "ISP": a party that offers transmission, routing, or provision of connections for digital online communications, between or among points specified by a user, of material of the user's choosing. The article says that the user does not control where the usenet post goes after they make it, so the user has not specified a point of transmission, so with respect to usenet, AOL does not qualify as an ISP.

However, the user specifies "rec.arts.whatever" as the end point. The user is oblivious to the IPs and server locations of various ISPs' usenet storage machines, but users don't know the actual IPs of Youtube.com, yet when they specify "youtube" as the location for an uploaded video, no one is suggesting that this technicality disqualifies Youtube from the safe harbor provisions. Youtube's video storage is probably on more than one machine with more than one IP, so, similar to Youtube, usenet is a web of servers, and the user does not choose a specific server as its target. Instead, the user chooses some nebulous "site" to send their data to. The site itself is not a real location, but an interconnected web of servers.

Email is similar.