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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."
Guess IRC and finally Gopher will be up next :/
...
Pay no attention to those alt.binaries. subscriptions.
Now everyone will know about usenet and how to access it.
Samsung took back my unlocked bootloader because Google wants me to rent movies. They're both evil.
I guess pigeons will be next. Woe is ye, oh little beasties of high capacity and ludicrous latency!
RIAA sues HTTP.com, RIAA sues USB 2.0, RIAA sues self?
Well, it kinda serves them right... making money off the freely-accessible Usenet.
But at the same time, it's kinda pointless. Suing the freely-accessible Usenet??
I misread the title as "RIAA Uses Usenet.com".
Wow, what a difference two letters make, huh?
The complaint, filed in the federal District Court in New York, accuses Usenet.com of providing access to millions of copyright-infringing files
Next up, the RIAA sues Nike, for their involvement in a "massive, global-scale sneaker net"
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
(hey you kids, get off my damn lawn!)
sorry.
anyway, what is this usenet stuff; and do I have to upgrade my copy of kermit to run it?
--
"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
I think we all should just plead the Fifth one way or another. If the RIAA is targeting this old bastion of nerddom, what's next? Are they going to search Slashdot for their targets based on self-incriminating statements?
The game.
See what happens when you talk about Usenet?
You see! This is what happens when you arseholes talk about Usenet!
We warned you about the first rule of Usenet! But no, you guys just didn't listen.
Now look what you did.
WTF? Usenet predates the WWW and is essentially just a protocol; they might as well sue "email" as well.
Please, for the love of god, don't let this story go any further....please nobody post this to digg, or reddit, or any other place that will get it even more publicity. What the MAFRIAA wants is for all of us to be up in arms, and if we get the 14 year old ZOMFG HACK-ZORES on the case that is exactly what will happen.
/quickly now //QUICKLY!
usenet will go the way of bittorrent.
NOthing to see here folks, move along.
NewslilySocial News. No lolcats allowed.
Geez, what is this, digg? usenet.com is just a company that gives payed access to usenet. The RIAA can't sue usenet anymore then it could sue HTTP (not that it wouldn't want to) but it sure as hell can sue Usenet.com the same as it can sue a company employing a webserver that hosts copyrighted files.
I have no idea if usenet.com can be considered guilty under current laws, they do have the files in question on their servers and charge people money to download them, so they are directly profitting from these files. On the other hand, by the nature of usenet they have no control over what appears on their servers (they better not be blocking kiddie porn or they lost that defence).
Are they a phone company just passing information, or are they a filesharer profitting from doing so.
Intresting case BUT stop pretending that the RIAA is stupid enough to sue USENET, it is sueing a company that sells access to usenet. People here are quick to blame politicians for not knowing enough, but count the posts that don't even seem to know the difference between these two.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Still exists? ive not seen them on an ISP for years.
Why not just have a blanket suit against all people that have internet access. Then tax us all for our 'assumed guilt'. Sort of like the 'music CDR tax'.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
As the legitimate owner of ~400 legally purchased CD's, do I not have the right to download MP3's to use on my own MP3 player instead of ripping them myself? Downloading an MP3 instead of ripping it is often faster, and usually gets me a better quality audio file than if I were to rip it myself. As a paying customer of an NNTP provider, should I not be allowed to pursue my fair use rights in this regard? And if the RIAA is interferring with this, can they be sued for violating my rights?
Just wondering...
Hrmm, angry you are...
I sense the AOL is strong in this one, yes?
...
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.
USENET FAQ
Posted: 00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970
Version 0.0.1
Authro: Kibble
Group: Alt.First.Post
The first rule of Usenet is you don't talk about Usenet
Actually, usenet.com (like any host taking part of the usenet network) is actually hosting the content.
Many usenet host (in universities or ISP) do not store binary groups (just because it take too much space on their servers). But some ISP do, and just turn a blind eye on the piracy, because they know they will attract more customers.
Thats what make it so attractive for pirated content: this are professional grade servers on the other side.
I'm surprised it took RIAA/MPAA so long to go after them.
A benefit of Usenet is that it is a push technology, not a pull. You could theoretically identify posters--or at least their servers by analyzing bang paths (and determining their forge point)--but downloading was largely anonymous... when NNTP servers were widely distributed and not just in the hands of a few businesses selling access to their massive feeds. You can't find an open NNTP server anymore that lets anyone post. It's far more vulnerable now as a result.
I remember the days of Usenet when porn was not plentiful and you could launch a DDoS on an FTP site just by posting a message that there was porn there. The attack was even more effective when the porn allegation was true.
There is a reason why Usenet was forgotten: it was the birthplace of spam. Though term spam was first coined on IRC from someone on a channel just sending the word "spam" repeatedly to disrupt a discussion and leaving, it manifested into the form of the modern scourge first on Usenet.
Except some of the binaries groups, where the porn spam is about as good or even better than the actual postings from individuals.
Oh, say does that Star-Spangled Banner entwine / The myrtle of Venus with Bacchus's vine?
Al Gore, inventor of the Internet, is now the defendant in a 400 billion dollar lawsuit filed by RIA.
This is my sig.
heh, you also need to remember that RIAA stands for recording industry association of AMERICA and as such this is really just a storm in a continent
the rest of the world will go about their daily business unaware of all of this jibber jabber from some group of american suits
they can filter all they like in their country, it should not affect the rest of us
this is of course all assuming that there are decent usenet servers outside the united states of america, which we know there are
-- If I were a fish, I'd be wet
http://stashbox.org/23136/P1010004.JPG
Take a look at that old man in the middle of this picture. He's my boss. He owns a karaoke bar in San Jose California called the 7 Bamboo.
This guy has been doing karaoke a loooong time. Up until 2002 and American idol, karaoke was sort of frowned on by most Americans. Then AI came out and there was a sudden surge in karaoke's popularity.
http://www.7bamboo.com/cms/?q=node/210
I did some screenshots of the Namm global music report in that article. I'll just summarize, basically the entire karaoke industry is making less money now than it was 10 years ago in 1997.
Myself, i've seen our business hurt by piracy. Before 2002, we were some quirky little Japanese karaoke bar, pretty much one of maybe 4 karaoke venues in San Jose, but between 2002 and 2004 we saw a sharp decline in attendance, and a sharp growth in karaoke venues and it's been a constant uphill battle to keep customers coming back.
I made a choice to not pirate karaoke at our club. We have about 7000 songs in our collection. This in in contrast to the 10-15 venues that have popped up in our area with anywhere between 50,000-150,000 songs.
Karaoke is expensive. About $2 a track. So somebody please tell me, with a straight face how these new guys that just popped out of nowhere suddenly have a $300,000 karaoke collection. Fact is, they don't.
It's still competition for us. Everyone that works at 7bamboo makes less money because of it. Less tips, less sales, less everything, but more work.
Look at the face of that old man and tell me that usenet.com is in the right by enabling these people to screw his business over with competition running on pirated songs. The business he and his wife built was in jeopardy until I came along and gave it a hot beef injection of technology.
Fortunately for them, and the rest of the 7b's employees, I can keep the place on the bleeding edge of karaoke technology without resorting to piracy. Still though, I think my time would have been better spent doing more worldly things.
Personally, I hope the RIAA wins this one. Don't mod me a troll for voicing this opinion either, because since when has someone voicing a legitimate, validated opinion considered trolling.
It's just not fair. Karaoke CD's have to be ripped carefully at 1x, so i've put over 400 manhours into ripping our 300 original CDG's. A pirate can suck off a newsgroup and have 7000 songs in a few hours. Given a few days, they'll have a 40-50k+ collection.
BTW RIAA if you're reading this, look into alt.binaries.sounds.karaoke. Shut that one down first, plzktnx.
--toq
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
Don't think that Usenet.com is not usenet, and therefore usenet is safe. By now you should know that the RIAA tries to take one case against a weak defendant, and then leverage that win in the courts against everyone else. If they can win against Usenet.com and their servers, expect legal letters to go out to every other usenet node telling them to shut down, filter groups (yeah, like that would work), or face a lawsuit against a billion dollar corporation.
This really is a big deal on a new front, and if they don't lose big time here, they'll try to roll over everyone else.
The truth is that the RIAA truly believes that they are more important than absolutely everybody else in the world!
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Deleted
Text-based Usenet is a useful service. More people should use it; it does a better job of allowing discussion than most web forums out there, and there's little threat of centralized control over the discussion.
I've been tempted to make comp.internet.services.news.slashdot in the Big-8...
Hey RIAA, why not go pick on someone your own size? Google Groups probably does more with usenet than anyone else. But right? They actually have real lawyers, and your case is a crock if it was ever challenged by an equally financed opponent.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Yep. Not only that -- the massive storage and bandwidth -- but you need to get a newsfeed. And that's not as easy as it used to be, when you could basically ask the sysop of your local university nicely. I'm not even sure what the commercial news servers would charge for a real UUCP newsfeed, or if they'd sell you one at all (why would they want to create competition for themselves?).
I'm not sure how many high-completion, long-retention news servers are around, but I suspect it's way, way down from what it used to be. It probably wouldn't take too many targeted lawsuits to, if not actually wipe out Usenet (that's impossible), but to at least make it very different from what it's like now. You could definitely make commercial services unprofitable, push it underground, and force people to eliminate binaries or at least shorten their completion/retentions a lot.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
(Do they still bar any proposals for the creation of binaries groups under rec? Do any comp.binaries.* groups survive today?)
Most of comp.binaries.* is gone. We're not looking to make more binaries groups in the Big-8. You can see the current creation policies here, and the list of "discouraged" proposal types is here.
There is a reason why Usenet was forgotten: it was the birthplace of spam.
Naah, that didn't have much to do with it. Spam was actually effectively defeated on Usenet. The problem is that nobody tells anybody else that it exists anymore, and so the number of posters have gone down... I personally think that the difficulty of making a new group caused problems too, and I hope that the new system may help.
There's an overlord joke in there somewhere... I swear.
I for one welcome our New Sued By RIAA Global Earth Protecting Internet Inventing Al Gore Robot Overlords...
This is my sig.
This seems like it there may be a precedent for this case already:
http://www.law.duke.edu/journals/dltr/articles/2006dltr0019.html
Shhhhh! Don't give them any ideas or they'll sue Silicon Dioxide next!
#naabhaprzrag, #sverubfr-000, #agi-fcbafberq, negvpyr[pynff*=' negvpyr-ary-'] { qvfcynl: abar !vzcbegnag; }
Let's hope Usenet.com has good lawyers who know about this.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You know, there is a difference between trolling and pointing out the flaws in your reasoning. Just saying.
Me too!
16,548,583 songs available? And I can download them at blazing fast speeds? Those bastards are going to fear our wrath!
Huh? Forgotten? I reviewed the list of MP3 groups tonight and by my estimate, there is over 25 million message headers, just in the alt* mp3 groups. I use Giganews which has a long retention window, but usenet has grown quite large in the last five years. My favorite newsreader, first purchased in 1997, Forte Agent, could no longer handle the massive number of headers without hanging, and that still occurs after a major rewrite of the code. I now use a more efficient client, News Rover that handles the huge influx of headers with ease,
You are correct; the average user is clueless about usenet. But that's just fine with me. The users that do know about it have been enjoying years of downloading bliss.
== First cross river, then insult alligator.
Thats when you call in us IT "Consultants." If we can't dazzle them with brilliance, we can baffle them with bullshit. ;)
Cheers.
This is my sig. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
. . . the less interested I become in their "product"
Keep fighting your customers, RIAA. You're alienating us all, thousands at a time. See my previous posts on the matter. I bought more CDs at the height of Napster (the original Napster) than I did in the 13 years of owning CD players previous to that. I have bought approximately SIX music CDs TOTAL since you succeeded in shutting down Napster (ded kitty -- http://i.afterdawn.com/news/napster_mainpage_2002_09_04.gif ).
What do I listen to now?
Music I already own.
Talk radio.
Classical.
Christian radio.
no new pop stations. No hard rock stations. I avoid getting exposed to new material, because if I listen to new material on the radio, I am supporting you indirectly by listening to paid-for-by-advertising content. If I listen to new material, I'd be tempted to download it, which will lead to viral marketing if I talk to so-and-so about this great new song I downloaded. . . and I would be tempted to purchase it, which would directly send you profits. No, instead I decided to completely avoid it and not be your customer, directly or indirectly. I'm sure I am not the only one.
In summary:
RIAA members, F*** you.
The Christian Right is Neither (Christian nor right). See: Matthew 23, Matthew 25, Ezekiel 16:48-50
Yup, and computer nerds that new at design-time that an elegant design can solve problems not yet even considered.
It seems that the mechanism built into technologies like usenet that were designed to prevent a single point of failure, will also defend us against a single point of law suit as well.
"The truth is that the RIAA truly believes that they are more important than absolutely everybody else in the world!"
When it comes to protecting the rights of their members, yeah. The AMA is more important than everybody else in the world regarding the interests of the doctors who are its members; the Ferret Protection Society is more important than anybody else in the world when it comes to ferret rights, and so on.
Pick a cause, and you'll find somebody who's defending it. Even causes we don't like.
Sitting in my day care, the art is decopainted.
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.
Furthermore, I'm flummoxed why a student with a masters degree in computer science would attack usenet in the way this author did. It's like she's the one student in the whole world who doesn't pirate, and the one CS person in the world who wants usenet to go down.
If the MAFIAA is allowed to pursue their Jihad, we will sooner than later wake up in a world where modern technology is outlawed, just because it could be used to infringe on their right to rip off consumers.
P2P Networks, the Usenet, HTTP, e-mail,... could all be used for unauthorized distribution. Cassette, video recorders and cameras could be used for unauthorized copying. Radio and TV could be used to listen to unauthorized broadcasts. Outlaw them all and you are back in the moyen age.
"And if I remember correctly, it takes some work to create a new group "
Well... some found it difficult. But I never did.
Keep in mind what makes an "official" usenet group means it's on "the list" of newsgroup names maintained by spaf then dave lawrence and now vixie at isc.
Unofficially a group - any group or hierarchy - was real if decwrl carried it. That's how reid created alt, he just stuck it in decwrls distribution list. vixie woreked for him at the time writing bind and administering decwrl. hoptoad (gilmore) and nasa ames (moffet) picked it up and it spread out from there.
But, outside of the "big 7" (sci/comp/rec etc) and alt there are other hierarchies.
decwrl is alas sadly gone now, but reid and vixie still work together, now at ISC.
Making a new hierarchy would be as simple as the right email to the right person from the right person. There's a non-zero chance I'm one of those persons. I'm pretty sure paul won't like the idea. But that's just Paul.
Keep in mind there are serious usenet sites outside the us.
Antigua would be a good place for another one and this might be a good business oppertunity for somebody. As a long time self appointed expert on usenet naming I'd suggest the "pokertax" hierarchy. Or maybe the "riaa" hierarchy. Or "mpaa".
Perhaps to split things up to keep it easy to organize you'd want riaa.mp3, mpaa.video and pokertax.microsoft for starters.
Need Mercedes parts ?
I can't remember who said it or the exact quote, but its something like this:
"The internet treats censorship like any other error, and routes around it."
On another note, the spam levels and trolls in usenet are so high, I find that its not really all the usable. (my killfile was huge)
If information wants to be free, why does my internet connection cost so much?
Toothpaste's out of the tube.No going back.
The music industry is dead.Watch it's muscles twitch as it files useless lawsuit after lawsuit.
Long Live Open Source music licensing.Long live a level playing field for musicians.
To quote an old trusted pundit.
"oh don't you judge a book just by the cover
unless you cover just another
and blind acceptance is a sign
of stupid fools who stand in line
like
e.m.i. e.m.i. e.m.i.
unlimited edition
with an unlimited supply
that was the only reason
we all had to say goodbye"
You know what to do.You've been doing it so well.
drive another nail in the coffin of the industry.
God Bless Usenet.
*Repent!Quit Your Job!Slack Off!The World Ends Tomorrow and You May Die!
Whether you agree with the technical correctness of that definition is immaterial to how a judge must apply the law.
-GiH
Cochran
Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, Chef's attorney would certainly want you to believe that his client wrote "Stinky Britches" ten years ago. And they make a good case. Hell, I almost felt pity myself! But, ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, I have one final thing I want you to consider. Ladies and gentlemen, this is Chewbacca. Chewbacca is a Wookiee from the planet Kashyyyk. But Chewbacca lives on the planet Endor. Now think about it; that does not make sense!
Gerald Broflovski
Damn it!
Chef
What?
Gerald
He's using the Chewbacca Defense!
Cochran
Why would a Wookiee, an eight-foot tall Wookiee, want to live on Endor, with a bunch of two-foot tall Ewoks? That does not make sense! But more important, you have to ask yourself: What does this have to do with this case? Nothing. Ladies and gentlemen, it has nothing to do with this case! It does not make sense! Look at me. I'm a lawyer defending a major record company, and I'm talkin' about Chewbacca! Does that make sense? Ladies and gentlemen, I am not making any sense! None of this makes sense! And so you have to remember, when you're in that jury room deliberatin' and conjugatin' the Emancipation Proclamation, [approaches and softens] does it make sense? No! Ladies and gentlemen of this supposed jury, it does not make sense! If Chewbacca lives on Endor, you must acquit! The defense rests.