Newzbin2 Closes For Good

AlphaWolf_HK writes "Newzbin2, one of the most recognized index sites for usenet, has closed for good. A statement reads: 'It is with regret that we announce the closure of Newzbin2. A combination of several factors has made this the only option. For a long time we have struggled with poor indexing of Usenet, poor numbers of reports caused by the majority of our editors dropping out & no-one replacing them. Our servers have been unstable and crashing on a regular basis meaning the NZBs & NFOs are unavailable for long periods and we don't have the money to replace them. To make things worse all our payment providers dropped out or started running scared. The MPA sued Paypal and are going at our innocent payment provider Kthxbai Ltd in the UK. Our other payment provider has understandably lost their nerve. Result? We have no more payment providers to offer & no realistic means of taking money (no, Bitcoin isn't credible as it's just too hard for 90% of people).'"

Comments

Kthxbai

[Hsien-Ko]

Apt.

Re:Kthxbai

[dwywit]

Get it? apt-get, gettit?

Re:Kthxbai

[Anonymous Coward]

I learned from my hubby that the magic word is sudo. For example, sudo get me a sammich. Incidentally we use it as our safe word. I'm not sure why...

Re:Kthxbai

[X0563511]

That's not what sudo stands for.

It stands for Super User Do

Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations do it better than governments ever could.

Re:Censorship

[Anonymous Coward]

Censorship. He didn't say mass murder.

Re:Censorship

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Make no mistake about it, this IS the government doing it. What happened is the government has effectively given the MPAA governing powers.

The whole reason ACTA is currently law is because Hollywood basically purchased Obama. If he ran it through the houses, as is required in the constitution, it wouldn't have passed due to the recent furor over SOPA. So, he just ignored the constitution and signed it anyways. If you need proof, look here:

http://www.ustr.gov/acta
http://www.ustr.gov/webfm_send/1862 (PDF)
http://www.ustr.gov/webfm_send/1740 (PDF)

All of those "free" poses, endorsements, and photo shoots from Hollywood celebrities weren't actually free, and Obama knew that. He had to take care of those who got him elected in order to get re-elected. This is the "change" that many "hoped" for.

Re:Censorship

[klingers48]

It's not even that simple. Look at the loaded, opinionist title of that article:

Piracy site Newzbin2 gives up and closes 15 months after block

Yeah, yeah... I know we all kind of give that knowing smile and half-eye-roll thing whenever we mention "legitimate usage!"... But still, the deck's stacked against them from the get-go. The media is abusing their position as much as the government to push the agenda of Big Content. Kind of frustrating really.

Re:Censorship

[Seumas]

The smart thing about self-censorship is that we have all of these industries gleefully starting up complex censorship systems to censor their own content, because they're under threat of the government doing it if they don't do it to themselves (and their users).

If the government did it, you could shout "CENSORSHIP!" and take them to court. And win.

When the private industries do it (MPAA, ESRB, RIAA), everyone says "Only governments can censor things. This isn't censorship, because it's private industries doing it. If you don't like it, don't watch movies, listen to music, or buy software!"

The same thing is accomplished. Perhaps more effectively, without any of the accountability under the law. It's sickeningly clever.

Re:Censorship

[Genda]

I'm sorry, just because Hollywood has bought the Democratic party doesn't mean they're above showing the Republican party a good time to pass a bill. Both sides of the aisle are equally whore ridden and I can show you the votes to prove it, so don't even bother. Obama just made it easy for the bullies in Hollywood to have their way. To be absolutely honest, as much as I'm offended by what these parasites have done to music, movies and game, I'm flat out terrified at what the rest of Corporate America is doing to patents, copyright, and more fundamental human Intellectual Property.

I saw a routine by a comedian the other day about how "They" indoctrinate presidents now. Obama is brought into a huge, beautifully appointed board room, sits at a hardwood burl meeting table and suddenly the lights dim and huge screen drops from ceiling. Then a short piece of jumpy film plays, its JFK in Dallas, seen from the top of a grassy knoll, through telescopic sights. Them BLAM. The screen recedes and the lights come up. And a disembodied voice come over the ceiling speakers and in a Texas drawl... "We liked that boy... We don't like you. Son, you gonna git an orientation tomorrow morning at 0600 sharp and we expect you to do what we tell you to do. Got it?

Re:Censorship

[AlphaWolf_HK]

You talk as if loving the constitution is a bad thing.

I don't identify as right wing. In fact, I don't really like the titles of left or right. They make people take sides as if they were fans of a football team instead of thinking individually about individual issues. Sadly, that is all that the elections have turned in to, and why I have reservations about even bothering to vote, because the issues aren't even important. Why, for example, was Romney's dog a major issue?

Like most, you've bought into it. Just because I'm against Obama, you automatically identify me as the enemy.

I voted for Jeff Flake (for being anti-SOPA and anti-earmarks) and basically ignored the rest of the ballot.

Re:Censorship

[AlphaWolf_HK]

If you got rid of corporations, you'd basically destroy the economy, and prevent a new one from growing.

Also, everything you said above also works when you apply it to unions.

The Bakers Union destroyed the American icon of treats - Hostess. After they did so, the Bakers Union leaders basically came away saying it was a victory because they stood their ground and sent a message, meanwhile 18,000 people lost their jobs, while the union leadership kept theirs. Hostess didn't fail due to mismanagement either, look at the practices the unions forced upon them. Workers who handled snacks weren't allowed to handle bread. Workers who handled bread weren't allowed to handle snacks. Bread truckers were supposed to refuse snacks on their trucks, even if they were headed to the same store. Instead they had to have a separate truck for snacks. The unions forced this practice due to a mutual agreement between two separate unions so that they didn't have to compete for jobs.

Unions also hate technology. Technology often costs them their jobs, and they force their industries to stay behind as a result. When shipping first started moving to storage crates, the unions forced their employers to allow the dock workers to remove the contents of the crate while it was on land, then put the crate on the ship, then individually load its contents back into the crate. Why? Because the union couldn't stand the thought of the dock workers losing their job. Technologies change, and there will always be frictional unemployment.

And then you have the bureaucracy the UAW creates. Employees who work at their station aren't allowed to correct problems with their equipment when it malfunctions, even if it is an easy fix. If they fix it themselves, then technicians who ARE supposed to fix it will file a grievance with their union, and the station worker will get reprimanded or even fired. How on earth can you compete on the global economy if you have to put up with that? It's no wonder GM and Chrysler went bankrupt.

The bosses of these unions talk their members up about how they need to prevent their employers from having a six figure income so that the employees can have a greater share, but meanwhile they are forced to give up their money to pay the union boss a six figure income or else they'll be forced out of their union, and then fired because the union has a stranglehold on employer contracts.

Unions also buy out the government, to our detriment! The sugar industry lobbied for the sugar tariffs. Because of the sugar tariffs, sugar is too expensive to be used in most food. Agricultural unions also pushed for corn subsidies. While the rest of the world uses sugar in their food, we use high fructose corn syrup. The chemists who create the world's soda pretty much all reside here, yet they make soda with sugar for the rest of the world, while ours has high fructose corn syrup.

Did this save any jobs? Not a chance, it just kept those unions happy.

In fact, union involvement has actually cost jobs. The steel industry lobbied for steel tariffs, saying that they'd lose their jobs if they had to compete with the global economy. The result of that is we pay a lot more for steel in America. Meanwhile, other countries pay less for steel. American goods now cost more, which means those goods now have a competitive disadvantage in the global economy. Steelworkers keep their jobs, but at the expense of many more jobs elsewhere in the economy.

Thank you unions!

As for your "clever social systems", those were tried many times, and all of them failed. Look at the Icarians, they were basically given an already built city for nothing at all when its previous inhabitants were forced out of it by the government. Yet somehow, they managed to have a rapidly declining economy until it all fell apart. Many *many* communes have risen and fallen for the exact same reasons. The only even remotely successful "clever social systems" were dictatorships, with millions dead in their wake.

And why on earth would you want a zero sum game? That implies no growth at all. Without growth, you are guaranteed to fail.

Re:Censorship

[AlphaWolf_HK]

No, the government censors. DMCA? We're not allowed to talk about breaking digital locks. If you do, you go to jail. The MPAA themselves cannot put you into jail, but they can force the government's hand thanks to that law.

The MPAA can sue you as well. But ultimately, how do they collect? They can't just go to your home and start taking your belongings and drain your bank account. They need a court order for that. The government makes that possible, and they send in the police to take it and hand it over.

Re:Censorship

[Opportunist]

The problem is that he is actually right.

Don't get me wrong. I'm certainly not a right-winger and very much pro-Obama, mostly due to lacking any sensible alternatives. When you're faced with the choice between shooting and stoning, shooting is still the less painful alternative. But to be successful as a politician in the US (at least if you're running for anything above local level) you need backers who stuff your war purse. You need people who buy you and who of course expect you to act in their interest.

In the US, you have the choice between two hookers for prez. Problem is, they won't blow you, you're just the poor idiot who gets to swallow the crap.

Re:Censorship

[Genda]

If you got rid of corporations, you'd basically destroy the economy, and prevent a new one from growing.

That's bull. You could absolutely build a free market enterprise system on privately held companies and there is no reason that they couldn't function not only more successfully but also allowing their owners to treat their employees better and balance the profit motive with the need and desire to contribute to society. I can see no significant need for the blight that is corporations.

Also, everything you said above also works when you apply it to unions.

The Bakers Union destroyed the American icon of treats - Hostess. After they did so, the Bakers Union leaders basically came away saying it was a victory because they stood their ground and sent a message, meanwhile 18,000 people lost their jobs, while the union leadership kept theirs. Hostess didn't fail due to mismanagement either, look at the practices the unions forced upon them. Workers who handled snacks weren't allowed to handle bread. Workers who handled bread weren't allowed to handle snacks. Bread truckers were supposed to refuse snacks on their trucks, even if they were headed to the same store. Instead they had to have a separate truck for snacks. The unions forced this practice due to a mutual agreement between two separate unions so that they didn't have to compete for jobs.

Unions also hate technology. Technology often costs them their jobs, and they force their industries to stay behind as a result. When shipping first started moving to storage crates, the unions forced their employers to allow the dock workers to remove the contents of the crate while it was on land, then put the crate on the ship, then individually load its contents back into the crate. Why? Because the union couldn't stand the thought of the dock workers losing their job. Technologies change, and there will always be frictional unemployment.

I won't argue with you that modern unions are a mess and many unions cost workers jobs, but you picked the wrong example. The folks that just bought Hostess, hedge funds Silver Point Capital and Monarch Alternative Capital dumped a ton of toxic debt into the company on top of its own untenable debt burden from years of poor labor negotiations. The Vulture capitalists never has any intention of dealing with the labor issue (as expressed in the prior round of layoffs), and were far more interested killing off the company and part out its assets. Those 18,000 jobs were as good as toasted as soon as the vultures landed.

And then you have the bureaucracy the UAW creates. Employees who work at their station aren't allowed to correct problems with their equipment when it malfunctions, even if it is an easy fix. If they fix it themselves, then technicians who ARE supposed to fix it will file a grievance with their union, and the station worker will get reprimanded or even fired. How on earth can you compete on the global economy if you have to put up with that? It's no wonder GM and Chrysler went bankrupt.

I sure I could help you find a dozen other insanely stupid union practices that hurt profitability and endanger workers jobs. How does that for a moment compare with the point I was making above that some people are blaming corporations for our problems and some people are blaming the government and my view is that they are one and the same and that trying to separate them is a futile endeavor.

The bosses of these unions talk their members up about how they need to prevent their employers from having a six figure income so that the employees can have a greater share, but meanwhile they are forced to give up their money to pay the union boss a six figure income or else they'll be forced out of their union, and then fired because the union has a stranglehold on employer contracts.

Unions also buy out the government, to our detriment! The sugar industry lobbied for the sugar tariffs.

Re:Censorship

[war4peace]

So then... Hollywood does choose the simple method: they buy ALL candidates and then just sit back and relax.
Money. Bringing power since... well, birth.

Re:Censorship

[Stuarticus]

What a load of crap, the Union didn't destroy hostess, the robber baron financiers did, they forced the staff to take pay cut after pay cut until eventually the staff had to say "No, accepting this amount of money as a wage is a worse option than being unemployed". The very definition of a free labour market in action. Maybe you should think what you would do if you were offered a 50% cut to your current salary while your bosses took a 100% pay increase?

Re:Censorship

[serviscope_minor]

The MPAA can sue you as well. But ultimately, how do they collect? They can't just go to your home and start taking your belongings and drain your bank account.

And it's the government that stops that from being possible.

Your point?

Re:Censorship

[Sulphur]

Censorship. He didn't say mass murder.

Editorship of mass deception.

Re:Censorship

[Hatta]

very much pro-Obama, mostly due to lacking any sensible alternatives.

It's not sensible to support Obama either. He's every bit as corrupt as Romney would have been. If you voted for Obama, you voted to continue the farce. Shame on you.

Re:Censorship

[crtreece]

Sounds a lot like a routine that Bill Hicks did in the early 90s.

"I have this feeling that whoever's elected president, no matter what promises you make on the campaign trail - blah, blah, blah - when you win, you go into this smoky room with the twelve industrialist, capitalist scumfucks that got you in there, and this little screen comes down... and it's a shot of the Kennedy assassination from an angle you've never seen before, which looks suspiciously off the grassy knoll.... And then the screen comes up, the lights come on, and they say to the new president, 'Any questions?'

"Just what my agenda is."

Re:Censorship

[tehcyder]

I always guess B in multiple choice questions. So far I've had an impressive 24% success rate!

Re:Censorship

[amiga3D]

And that's the kind of comment idiots always make, if you disagree with someone just make him go away with a label. I might be classified as right wing but I do find myself agreeing with the so called left sometimes and then there are times I think both sides have it wrong. I think the current political climate enables all kinds of abuse because people are so divided they focus on each other rather than how our leaders are selling us all out. I was never a big fan of President Bush but most of what I disliked about his administration has been continued by President Obama. I actually wish President Obama was a better liberal because at least we might then have been able to get rid of the worst abuses of the Patriot Act.

Re:Censorship

[Hatta]

As opposed to letting the American Taliban in the form of Romney (he played the extremist, he can suck it up and accept the label) and Ryan and all the "legitimate rape" morons (open or closeted) get into power and run roughshod over sensible people?

Any of those things would be preferable to continuing the illusion of democracy when we have none. We survived GWB and we would have survived Romney as well. There is much, much more to gain by breaking the one party system we have today than there is to lose.

another dot.com bites the dust

[Spy Handler]

lemme go submit this to Pud at fuckedcompany.com... brb

No reason not to release codebase as open source

[Paran]

Let someone else take over where they're now leaving off, just like they did for newzbin1.

Google Groups next?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good, now can Google Groups be the next one to close?

Seriously, while Usenet archives done properly can be of some good, Google's is the worst ever.

Search for information on medicine, get online pharmacy posts in the archive search.

Search for someone by name, and if there are any flamewars, ridicule, and/or defamation posts containing their name in the subject, those posts will be at the top of the search. Posts with actual useful content be damned, all they go off of is the subject keywords and maybe the references header.

Search for any topic not medicine information or by someone's name, get a random assortment of old and new posts by default, rather than a sorted order by date from newest to oldest, due to the default being by "relevance".

Oh yeah, and the Usenet archive is also used by employers and coworkers alike for trying to use outdated posts as either disqualification of employment or trying to get someone fired. Like it's some important background check from the long irrelevant past, while others including celebrities spout off on Facebook and Twitter.

(Yeah, I know about that Ron S, Sarah A, and Spencer S--but it didn't work, right? Come on Ron, you only shared the fact that YOU recently discovered the archive with your coworkers, but in fact HR made some minor changes but not as expected, didn't they? From what I heard, including a separation of two team members so there was a little less contact between them, and one was possibly up for a one month suspension from work--it was your call right Ron? How do I know? Ron, instead of taking it to a conference focus room (HP SD called them focus rooms, right?), you talked about it in the cube aisles. But the Google Groups 20 years backfilled archive had been around since 2001--you were that many years uninformed about Usenet.)

Anyway, I get a better search using Google web search (sorry, Everything) than I do with the Groups search. The Google Groups search may be good for finding spam, blackmail material, or seriously old outdated posts, but the search quality of the Groups search really does suck.

Aye, dreadful

[Anonymous Coward]

Very true, Google Groups must be the most atrocious service in existence from a major provider. If one of my students created something that appalling for a project they'd be very lucky to get through. It provides neither good functionality nor good aesthetics. The only adjective that comes to mind is "primitive", and given that this is a Google service, also "pathetic". Google should really be ashamed of their incompetence.

But nobody cares.

Re:Seriously

[suso]

wtf is newzbin2? I used USENET but since existence of online forum... what's the point?

The irony is your username is grumpyman.

Re:Seriously

[Anonymous Coward]

Usenet is now widely used for broadcasting unauthorized copies of copyrighted material. Something like a gigabyte digitized movie would be split unto 100's of Usenet posts. One way to get the movie would be to manually find and download these 100's of posts one by one. Another way is with an automated client that would get an index file pointing to the 100's of Usenet posts, and use the index file ot retrieve the individual posts without manual attention. Putting the index file together required sitting around monitoring Usenet feeds figuring out what was what, distinguishing them from spam, etc. So where did the index files come from? Well there was a commercial company doing it, called newzbin2, the one you asked about. But it is now shut down.

Re:Seriously

[tlhIngan]

USENET is an efficient way to distribute files, and very popular because it's download only (so no uploading or tagging your IP address). The thing with Newzbin2 is that they provide NZB files which are index files that your usenet provider (for those that offer web-based interfaces like Easynews) or your NNTP client can easily parse and retrieve the appropriate postings to reconstruct the file. It's basically a list of posts.

This is important as retention at the two major USENET providers (most are resellers of their service) is over 1000 days now, but the indexes are only valid for around 300-600 days. The only way to retrieve the other files are through index files like NZBs.

Re:Seriously

[Nyder]

wtf is newzbin2? I used USENET but since existence of online forum... what's the point?

Newzbin2 (or any sites like it) is a search engine for usenet and will put the files you select in a convenient .nzb file that you then load up in your usenet reader (that supports it of course), and it will automatically grab the files you had selected.

For example, I can search the alt.binaries.multimedia newgroup for a poster called tvdude, and it will lists the files he has uploaded.

This is more convenient then having to download all the headers in the newsgroup and having to sort thru them to find what you want. In fact, it's made it so easy to get stuff that usenet became more popular and is being targeted now with DMCA notices.

That's OK - there's Gmail

[rueger]

Which, according The Reg, will now allow a 10 gig attachment.

Google vs MPAA??

So long, Usenet.

[Seumas]

Usenet has remained a great resource all these years. Even today. (Look at the wealth of create comp.lang groups). Between ISPs dropping Usenet as part of their service and dedicated usenet services being shutdown under the crush of harassment and threats -- it seems like it's almost time to say our goodbye's to something that really shouldn't be dying. :/

Re:So long, Usenet.

[wvmarle]

It's the binaries that have to be dropped. But then many of those newzbin type sites will lose most of their audience I suppose.

And what it has over a web forum: no single point of failure. No need for someone to maintain that one site, that one interface. No need to use a web browser, there are other ways to access it. Easy local archiving if you like.

Spam is an issue, can't deny that.

Re:So long, Usenet.

[wvmarle]

Indeed, all the more reason to remove the binaries from usenet.

Re:Seriously

[Seumas]

That usenet is essentially a decentralized discussion facility and you don't need to be forced into an online forum for the discussions? That it's just simple text without pages full of ads and idiots putting a hundred megabytes worth of shit in their signature line? That you can participate in discussions of over 100,000 subjects without having to sign up for 100,000 different accounts at centralized websites, each owned and moderated and maintained by different guys?

Was good while it lasted..

[lemur3]

This was a neat website, useful.. my usenet downloader even was integrated with the websites bookmark feature.. this was pretty darn cool...

sadly.. once they lost PayPal as a payment option ..the end was nigh. ..I left and i guess others did too..

+Bitcoins

[u64]

So what's wrong. Isn't 10% of users still a gain from 0% to 10% ?

Re:Now maybe finally we'll see the end

[Vintermann]

My torrent client supports downloading segments in order for preview purposes, if I want to do that.

My rar client, however, I can't convince to unpack half a file.

Also, there are often multiple files, and I only want one.

If you want to keep seeding and use an unpacked version, you need to keep two copies around (especially annoying when it is a 1.4 GB video file which wasn't compressed anything whatsoever by winrar). Meaning most people delete the rar junk. Meaning stuff doesn't get seeded.

Compression in torrents should be done on individual files if you have to do it. These archives should not be further split up. And you shouldn't use that proprietary dinosaur winrar.

Re:Seriously

[AlphaWolf_HK]

Usenet binaries are SOOO much better than torrents. Zero chance of letters from your ISP, you have no reliance upon other people to keep seeding forever, you max out your pipe (mines 30Mbit) all the time, you yourself don't need to seed forever (go ahead and delete it when you finish,) and there is some great software that automates everything you want.

For example, I don't need to hit the pirate bay and find an ideal release of the dark knight rises. Instead I type the name (even a partial name) into couchpotato, and it automatically finds it. I can even tell it what quality I want it in, whether it is a full 50GB blu-ray rip, or maybe aim for 1080p with 10GB file size. (Generally I do the later, and only do BD rips for really good movies.)

I can also automate downloading all of my favorite shows as they air without having to manually do anything. Dexter, The Walking Dead, Game of Thrones, and others automatically download on to my NAS without having to visit a single website. Just set it to get that show, and forget it. That program is called sickbeard. If a release of an episode is broken (happens sometimes, happens even more on torrents,) and a proper is released, it automatically downloads the proper release and discards the bad one.

Re:Seriously

[zootie]

Still, the raw speed of usenet and the set it and forget it nature is so much better than torrents. Torrents take babysitting to make sure you get them right (and you have to keep them around longer when you're done if you want to be a good citizen and make sure the ecosystem keeps working). With nzbs, you just chose them once and you're pretty much done in seconds (with the selection) and you're watching content in minutes (and there are many automation tools that blow RSS out of the water).

There is also the liability issue. With torrents, depending on local laws, you're usually liable because you're transferring data to others. With a distributed system like usenet, (most legal precedents place) the liability on the side of the poster (good luck finding him/her), and you're just catching something that is out there, and not taking any further action. It detaches providing something from consuming it.

BTW, Sickbeard can also work with torrent files, but I don't know how much automation it supports.

Re:Now maybe finally we'll see the end

[ThatsMyNick]

Scene (the source of the rip) still relies on FTP. As long as the source is compressed and people can verify easily using the sfv file that it really is that particular scene release, rar files are here to stay.
 
And most people dont delete their rar files, they simply use a player like VLC that supports rar files (it even supports incomplete rar files).