p2pnet - rss feed: Big Music sues Usenet.com
p2pnet news | Music:- It had to happen, and now it has.
Warner Music, EMI, Vivendi Universal and Sony BMG are suing Usenet.com.
Usenet.com, “sells access to content that includes millions of unauthorized music files and ‘touts its service as a haven for those seeking pirated content’,” says Billboard, going on:
“Specifically, the complaint alleges, usenet.com loads online bulletin boards or ‘newsgroups’ obtained from the usenet network onto its server. It then sells access to the newsgroups that it has chosen to host on its usenet.com service. The suit claims that many of the newsgroups that usenet.com chooses to offer “are explicitly dedicated to copyright infringement.”
The labels, “seek an unspecified amount of damages, an injunction and a declaration that the company is infringing copyrighted works,” the story adds.
Also See:
Use free p2pnet newsfeeds for your site. It’s really easy!
Subscribe to p2pnet.net | | rss feed: http://p2pnet.net/p2p.rss | | Mobile - http://p2pnet.net/index-wml.php
Net access blocked by government restrictions? Use Psiphon from the Citizen Lab at the University of Toronto. Go here for the download, and here for details. Click here or here to learn how to by-pass censorship in your area.
October 16th, 2007 at 12:54 pm
It was bound to happen. We can only hope that the company will be able to apply for safe harbor conditions as they are a conduit. Secondly, I understand the argument has been made before that the material gleaned from Newsgroups can’t be censored because they are simply ASCII postings in themselves that requires a computer to recompile the information into something meaningful. They are separate messages. The question remains if you have just bits of information scattered, would a piece of that information by itself constitute copyright infringement? I believe that the RIAA are feeling emboldened as of late from winning their initial suit and they are now trying to rope in all the other areas where they had no control previously.
If they win the suit, one other avenue to pursue will be for the companies to move to a country that does not acknowledge the copyright laws of the US and set up shop there. The next course of action from the RIAA/MPAA/BSA will be to have their credit cards shut off but since they are only a newsgroup service, they will have a much tougher time proving to Mastercard and Visa that their service is deemed as piracy.
After their recent antics, I wish they would all just roll over and go away like they’ve been telling us would happen for years.
October 16th, 2007 at 3:09 pm
Wow Jon. Anyone capable of typing “wikipedia” with a keyboard could figure out this lawsuit is 28 years too late to accomplish anything. Suing Usenet.com is akin to suing AT&T or Ted Stevens. They aren’t responsible for copyright infringement any more than they are capable of censoring the entire Internet. (They can’t, so they aren’t.)
Ciao
Robert
October 16th, 2007 at 8:01 pm
This is not a good thing.
“The question remains if you have just bits of information scattered, would a piece of that information by itself constitute copyright infringement?” I think that argument was already settled in the RIAA’s favor regarding torrents. Also, logic and common sense does not apply here, when we have a judge ordering people to “hand over the data stored in the ram”, and no amount of explanation can get him to change his mind. I predict that the U.S. based usenet providers will eventually all get shut down, and Sweden and Russia will be the places to go for that service.
I’m going to rant a little at this point and say if I read one more article about “how we can change the business model” so the RIAA can make money and stop suing people I’m going to fucking PUKE!!! The RIAA is bad for musicians and bad for customers, and the sooner the companies they represent go under the better things will be for everyone else. DON’T FEED THE DINOSAUR!!!!
October 16th, 2007 at 8:50 pm
OK. I feel I must speak out.
Instead of the geek community cowering away waiting for the RIAA to come directly to our doorstep and sue us within an inch of our lives, I propose this…
A new generation of application should be written. Designed using encryption end-to-end. Allowing multiple central points for search and still total anonymity to the users. The technology is already there. It just needs someone to be stitched together.
Each time Big Media plugs a new “hole” (i.e. removes any innovation), the geeks of the world go back to their compilers. They look at the old methods and make them better.
A look at old methods…
Napster made an easy target… just kill one central server and the world is back to normal.
Gnutella was very slow and offered no swarming downloads.
Bittorrent does not use any encryption and requires a central server easily taken down. It does not mask the identity of the downloader or the uploader.
Here is my idea…
Should be written in a language that does not support “managed code” and should be completely open-source. This way all encryption will be open and less likely to be tampered with.
Use port 443 and SSL encryption end-to-end. SSL traffic cannot be stopped on the Internet. After all, closing this port will basically stop all forms of E-commerce. Make all communication (even at the bit-level) look just like data being transferred on the web. Deep packet inspection can also be sidestepped be making the traffic indistinguishable from other forms of communication.
Superhubs that aggregate data shared on each machine. These should be surfed like a web page, complete with search, photographs and meta data. This will allow the convenience of surfing for torrents, without having any central server that can be taken down. Over time, the best of these will rise to the top and gather a large group of users. Each hub can either be an actual server, like one at Pirate bay, or just a client with an add-on package that allows it to catalog the data of other users. This catalog can be stored in RAM, so a simple reboot of the server will dump all data. Most modern machines have gigabytes of RAM and could store filenames, some metadata and a link to a photo or two for each file (if needed). This data is textural and does not take up that much space. Moreover, each time a database goes down, it can connect to the users again and re-sync.
The Superhubs could also use some form of voting system to keep the best downloads at the top and allow the worst to die from the network.
Swarming downloads. Use SHA1 to hash each file an allow multiple users to connect to connect to each other and share parts of a file. Use the bittorent method of distributed downloads.
Store no log files or IP addressed to disk. All peer info stored in RAM. Each time a client starts again, it will peer out and find some nodes to connect to. This can be done using a seed file downloaded from a secure website, or a URL to a SSL webserver. For example, Pirate Bay could have a connection peer that catalogs SuperHubs. This would be very difficult to get this seed data removed from the web.
Use TOR, or some form of Onion Routing technique. Allow each client to route messages from one node to another, in true peer-to-peer fashion. The allows users to pass messages from one node to another while preserving the anonymity of both the sender and the receiver. (Please see websites about TOR for more info). However, this would not use the current TOR network, because it is not made for this type of traffic. With this feature, it is very difficult to determine who is hosting files. This routing method should be used for both searching SuperHubs and all transfer data.
We need to stand together on this issue. There will never be a better time to stamp out DRM and bring equality back to the Internet.
It only takes one person to write the application that will bring freedom to millions.
FTRIAA!
October 16th, 2007 at 9:28 pm
The amount of sheer ignorance in all the comment threads in regards to this story (here and elsewhere) is bloody staggering
most people seem to have confused a provider with the protocol itself
The bright side to that when it comes to usenet outsider ignorance is bliss…..
October 16th, 2007 at 9:37 pm
“The bright side to that is, when it comes to usenet, outsider ignorance is bliss…..”
Fixed
October 17th, 2007 at 8:14 am
Before everyone drops their Usenet account….you might consider a few things…first this is usenet.COM….NOT THE USENET NETWORK!
Second, usenet ,.com provides an online search of files….something other usenet sites have not offered.
Third, Newsgroups can be covered under the same protections ISP providers are. And as long as this company complied with take down notices, I really cannot see the RIAA winning this one.
October 17th, 2007 at 11:33 am
I have to agree with others, I can’t see how they win with this.
I knew it was only a matter of time before they tried suing on of the usenet providers.
Since usenet has so many legitimate uses and was around before copyright infringement met anything to anyone, I can’t see how they could convince anyone that it was inducing infringement. Now Usenet.com may be a different story but aren’t they just a service provider? In other words, don’t they just sell access to their services?
October 18th, 2007 at 8:41 am
“In other words, don’t they just sell access to their services?”
Well they also have an online search that could turn up copyrighted material on their site….something other newsgroup providers have not done.
Weather or not this was one of the reasons they were targeted is unclear.
October 19th, 2007 at 4:11 am
“And as long as this company complied with take down notices, I really cannot see the RIAA winning this one.”
That’s the problem. If you read the court docs, you’ll see that Usenet.com have been warned in the past, but never did anything about it. Also, they ARE boasting about how their service can be used to download MP3s without fear of lawsuit, and such. To be fair, they were almost asking for trouble, really.
October 19th, 2007 at 4:11 am
“Well they also have an online search that could turn up copyrighted material on their site….something other newsgroup providers have not done.
Weather or not this was one of the reasons they were targeted is unclear.”
It is among the reasons, yes. Read the court docs, it’s long, but it’s all there.
October 20th, 2007 at 9:36 am
UNSPOKEN INVITATIONS TO INFRINGE
If usenet.com is successfully sued for the reasons given in the lawsuit, then all blank CD/DVD manufacturers (which includes a well known RIAA member) because their products are also (unspoken) invitation for copying music, videos and other types of files without the authorization of the copyright holders.
While at it, sue all the radio stations, manufacturers of radio-cassette combos and manufacturers of cassettes. These are also unspoken invitations to infringe.
Sorry RIAA, but an “invitation”, to third parties to share files among themselves is not infringement, least of of specific works.