Copyright Demands Push Largest European Usenet Provider Permanently Offline

First time accepted submitter jonathan1979 writes "Dutch anti-piracy authority BREIN has caused the largest European usenet provider, News-Service.com, to immediately terminate its services as they felt they could not live up to the court order served earlier."

Comments

Re:power

[nepka]

Oh and just as a note, they could still just carry all the other groups. In fact they could carry all groups, but just block binaries. They already have that system in place as they save text posts longer than binaries. This would satisfy BREIN's wishes. Of course, Usenet providers know that they will lose all their pirating customers if they did that, so they decided to just wrap it up and go home (after a good long profitable run).

Re:power

[Arlet]

It's relatively easy to block binaries in the discussion groups, though.

Re:power

[houghi]

There is no difference between text and binaries to usenet - binaries are just yencoded as text.

So there IS a difference.
So it would be easy to detect and thus blocked. Also many groups do not want binaries in their groups and users have been known to get removed.

Does this mean there will never ever be somone posting illegal material? No, it would not.

Re:Sort of like the BSA

[mcgrew]

Despite their best efforts, the BSA promotes open-source software.

In 2000, the Business Software Alliance conducted a raid and subsequent audit at the San Luis Obispo, Calif.-based company that turned up a few dozen unlicensed copies of programs. Ball settled for $65,000, plus $35,000 in legal fees. But by then, the BSA, a trade group that helps enforce copyrights and licensing provisions for major business software makers, had put the company on the evening news and featured it in regional ads warning other businesses to monitor their software licenses.

Humiliated by the experience, Ball told his IT department he wanted Microsoft products out of his business within six months. "I said, 'I don't care if we have to buy 10,000 abacuses,'" recalled Ball, who recently addressed the LinuxWorld trade show. "We won't do business with someone who treats us poorly."

Ball's IT crew settled on a potpourri of open-source software--Red Hat's version of Linux, the OpenOffice office suite, Mozilla's Web browser--plus a few proprietary applications that couldn't be duplicated by open source. Ball, whose father, Ernie, founded the company, says the transition was a breeze, and since then he's been happy to extol the virtues of open-source software to anyone who asks. He spoke with CNET News.com about his experience.

Re:power

[blackest_k]

The Netherlands seems to have changed from peaceful easy going to extremely right ring.
From banning products to banning religious practices.

Hal-ah and Kosher meat is soon to be banned from production in the Netherlands, which seems very much an attack on the Muslim and Jewish communities. Strangely importing of frozen Hal-ah meat is not an issue. Hal-ah meat is of extremely high quality due to the stringent rules of what is fit to be eaten and you don't need to be Jewish or Muslim to appreciate that.

It's such a far cry from the freedom loving Dutch people who were the most welcoming and friendly that you would find in Europe. Sad to see the about turn

Re:power

[Luckyo]

Halal meat isn't higher quality - it's usually lower quality in the West. The myth of it being "higher quality" comes from dark ages, when slaughtering animal without letting the blood drain out of it would cause blood remaining in the body to spoil extremely quickly (as blood is a very fertile soil for bacteria growth). Halal meat, while considered religious was actually started as a tradition for more healthy way of draining blood from the animal to get meat that was healthier to eat due to lower bacterial content.

Thing is, modern slaughtering techniques extract blood much more efficiently then slitting animal's throat and letting it drain while its heart still beats. As a result, just like halal meat being better quality then dark ages western meat, it's worse quality then modern industrially slaughtered meat. If you hear otherwise, know that you're talking to uninformed person or a liar with a (religious) axe to grind.