Blogger Aldor Nini ‘fighting for freedom of speech’
p2pnet news view Freedom | P2P:- “We’re currently fighting for … freedom of speech and have released our first press release related to this issue and we’re asking you for publication,” says blogger Aldor Nini in an email.
Nini works for anti-piracy company Easycom and on October 4, he authored an article in buildblog.de which began »»»
We won’t be able to explain ultimately if UseNeXT is a legitimate service or you’re behaving unlawful if you’re downloading the newest Harry Potter of Warner Bros. from the UseNeXT service – but we’ll provide some insight into the service, the origin, the people behind it, its relation to copyright owners, the piracy problem, and its growth becoming one of the most popular legitimate downloading platforms for illegal movies worldwide.
The Rising
Regensburg, a small city in Bavaria, Germany – a country in Europe: Two guys, which we’re not going to name personally, are developing new products for the Internet. The goal should be to generate money – fast, secure and mostly in a legitimate way. It shouldn’t be such complicated as Facebook, YouTube, or MySpace is – no, it should have a development period of 3 months and an ROI of a maximum of 6 months.
The idea: Usenet – a network, used by a very wide audience worldwide posting text articles into so-called newsgroups and exchanging -knowledge- by doing so. Commonly this -knowledge- might be also files, so called “binary files”, which can be “posted” into the “Usenet”.
-Knowledge-, in the form of Madonnas newest music hit, U2 newest album, Warner Bros. newest blockbuster, or Nintendos newest game – and surely, audio books, books, e-books, and even shortbooks, can be found on the Usenet.
The impact of the knowledge: In 2005, when UseNeXT was born, approx. 0.8 TB of data were posted into the global Usenet every day. So, 0.8 TB of new knowledge every day – 185 DVDs of knowledge every single day.
Today: 6 TB of new knowledge is posted every day in the form of Warner Bros. Harry Potter, The Dark Knight, and Disneys Up! or Hannah Montana into the Usenet.
Once a file gets into the Usenet it can be downloaded (if your Internet connection allows such speed) with up to 158 Mbit/s from the Usenet – this means: approx. 34 seconds (!) to download a full length movie. This is the proof: UseNeXT Downloading World Record.
The problem: Petabytes of data, different encoding mechanisms, posted into more then 130,000 different newsgroups (like different folders on a PC) spread over hundreds of servers worldwide.
The solution: A software solution which searches for the content within seconds, and enables every person on the world, young and old, to be able to download the newest Harry Potter within a couple of minutes with three or four simple mouse clicks.
So: Providing more available titles then in the cinemas, the VOD platforms, or the video rental stores around the corner and get them directly to your PC or Notebook – UseNeXT was born.
The article explains the infrastructure behind the international Usenet-Service UseNeXT, its vendors, as well as its functionality related to pirated movie content on Usenet, says Aldor’s press statement.
Two days later (6th Oct. 2009) he and and the publisher, “received a legal threat as a pre-litigation letter from the UseNeXT lawyers (Att. 2) to censor the article on Usenet and the Web,” he and buildblog.de’s Jakob Zolgalla say, continuing »»»
UseNeXT claims, that they’ve received information, that the article has been sent to an employee of Warnerbros. – and they declare that the following statements are WRONG and therefore affect the public-image of their service:
- “It is possible to download illegal content from the UseNeXT service” (translated from lawyers letter)
- “The UseNeXT software has a functiontality which somehow (we don’t know why) owns the passwords of the infringing contents archives and unpacks it automatically. This content won’t be available for other users on the Usenet network not using the UseNeXT software and/or not knowing the password.”
- “Spam and Fakes will be sorted out by the community and/or the UseNeXT software. By fake, we mean an uploaded instance of Harry Potter which does not include the movie but simply fake video material.”
- “The rating system: By taking a deeper look into the way how content is ordered, we’ll find out, that the best rated content will be on top. Naturally the full length Warner Bros. Harry Potter movie will be rated better then the simple trailer, this function does also assist in finding the best pirated instances of a movie within the community.”
- “Whereas the Usenet is a real, peered and open network, UseNeXT is a closed environment. For the Usenet there exists a way to takedown infringing content automatically, but there is no standard way to takedown infringing content automatically at UseNeXT from the point of view of a third party not having access to the UseNeXT database”
- “The Usenet network understands the so-called “cancel” commands, whereby the UseNeXT search index won’t follow such cancel commands to remove infringing content. This means: If the content has been taken down at one of UseNeXT source providers, the UseNeXT index would still show up the file and allow downloading via one of the non-compliant Usenet Providers, such as News-Service.”
- “The UseNeXT software indexes the content being available on Usenet (and on News-Service servers in Netherland), allows its users to upload their “prefered” type of -content- into the global Usenet – anonymously and for free – and allows other users of their platform to download this -content- by paying a fee per downloaded Gigabyte.”
- “More then 90% of the german speaking content is uploaded by UseNeXT users, more then 24% of the international Usenet content is uploaded by the UseNeXT community.”
- “Regensburg, a small city in Bavaria, Germany – a country in Europe: Two guys, which we’re not going to name personally, are developing new products for the Internet. The goal should be to generate money – fast, secure and mostly in a legitimate way. It shouldn’t be such complicated as Facebook, YouTube, or MySpace is – no, it should have a development period of 3 months and an ROI of a maximum of 6 months.”
- “…again limits were reached, hundreds of Gbit/s of network usage peaks were forcing UseNeXT to include a third vendor into the business – Giganews, a Texas / US company, one of the oldest Usenet providers worldwide.”
Authors and publishers general comment on the claim is, that the statements, which have been made in the article are correct and true – in addition they confirm that freedom of speach and the freedom of the press are one of the most important values of our society, which – in fact – is also confirmed by a statement of UseNeXT on their own main page, where UseNeXT explains the freedom of speech on Usenet: “Everyone has the right to gain knowledge as well as to make public and disseminate, in written and spoken, his word by using the UseNeXT service. Nobody should be afraid to be discriminated due to his religious or political position by using the Usenet.” (translated from http://www.usenext.de)
We think this is a great statement – not only for the Usenet – and we should all stick on that – our claim is to maintain the freedom of speech – therefore the article should remain uncensored on the Usenet and the Web.
The remainder of the buildblog.de article quted at the beginning says »»»
Vendors (historical)
UseNeXT started to provide its service by using the server facilities of News-Service – a Usenet company from Netherland – when the service was started in 2005.
The UseNeXT software indexes the content being available on Usenet (and on News-Service servers in Netherland), allows its users to upload their “prefered” type of -content- into the global Usenet – anonymously and for free – and allows other users of their platform to download this -content- by paying a fee per downloaded Gigabyte. Preferably users have to commit to download at least 200 or 300 Gigabytes of -content- every year.
Because UseNeXT was growing rapidly, News-Service was hiting its networks limits, so UseNeXT needed a second vendor, who should be able to deliver the technical infrastructure necessary for hundreds of downloaded Gigabytes every single day.
Highwinds Network Group Inc., a company funded by a Venture-Capital company called “European Founders“ was ready to provide the next dimension of server infrastructures to download not only hundreds of Gigabytes, but now even hundreds of Terabytes of -content- every single day.
Highwinds does also host the full infrastructure of UseNeXTs competitor Firstload from Austria/Dubai (69.16.143.146) – this is another big Usenet provider offering the same service but limited to the german-speaking countries.
Back to UseNeXT: That was not enough – again limits were reached, hundreds of Gbit/s of network usage peaks were forcing UseNeXT to include a third vendor into the business – Giganews, a Texas / US company, one of the oldest Usenet providers worldwide.
Nowadays: While you’re reading this article the server infrastructures used by UseNeXT have been capable of transfering more then 5,000 copies of movies to users paying for this -knowledge- Byte per Byte on a global scale. Server facilities of News-Service, Highwinds and Giganews with locations in Europe, US and Asia are used to guarantee movie downloads, within 34 seconds, multi-million times a month, every single day, around the clock.
The Community
More then 90% of the german speaking content is uploaded by UseNeXT users, more then 24% of the international Usenet content is uploaded by the UseNeXT community.
The community is necessary to upload new content into the Usenet. The Usenet would die without new uploads, cause older content (e.g. older then 220 days), is automatically removed from the network.
The UseNeXT community: Whereas the Usenet community just posts new knowledge into the Usenet, the UseNeXT community does more, e.g. it renames titles of infringing content to well-formed, more nice looking titles. Example: “TDKNGT xCrew CamRipBetterQuali German-DVDRip” would possibly be renamed by the UseNeXT community to “Warner Bros. presents The Dark Knight – German language, ripped from a DVD, better quality”.
The rating system: By taking a deeper look into the way how content is ordered, we’ll find out, that the best rated content will be on top. Naturally the full length Warner Bros. Harry Potter movie will be rated better then the simple trailer, this function does also assist in finding the best pirated instances of a movie within the community.
Differences to Usenet
UseNeXT does not catalogize all newsgroups and all articles of the Usenet in its software solution to be downloaded with its Wizard. This newsgroups and so, the content is roughly pre-selected.
Comments and ratings performed via UseNeXT will not be uploaded into the Usenet and will only be available in UseNeXTs own database for their own customers.
In many cases pirated content will be encrypted into passworded archives. The UseNeXT software has a functiontality which somehow (we don’t know why) owns the passwords of the infringing contents archives and unpacks it automatically. This content won’t be available for other users on the Usenet network not using the UseNeXT software and/or not knowing the password.
Spam and Fakes will be sorted out by the community and/or the UseNeXT software. By fake, we mean an uploaded instance of Harry Potter which does not include the movie but simply fake video material.
On Usenet, data is usually listed and sorted by timestamp or the order it was getting into the Usenet newsgroups. At UseNeXT data is ordered by popularity, by ratings, and can be filtered by many options, like filesize (e.g. to filter out only >= 800 MB movie files).
Content and articles cannot be modified after they’ve been uploaded – on Usenet. At UseNeXT the title of the content can be modified and is then available with the new title for every UseNeXT user. A video, which would be uploaded on Usenet with the title “My private home video” but containing Harry Potter, at UseNeXT, the community would rename it to “Harry Potter”. All other Usenet users won’t probably download the video, because they would assume to be downloading a private home video, but UseNeXT users would get this item listed as the new Harry Potter.
Copyright Infringements
Whereas the Usenet is a real, peered and open network, UseNeXT is a closed environment. For the Usenet there exists a way to takedown infringing content automatically, but there is no standard way to takedown infringing content automatically at UseNeXT from the point of view of a third party not having access to the UseNeXT database.
The Usenet network understands the so-called “cancel” commands, whereby the UseNeXT search index won’t follow such cancel commands to remove infringing content.
This means: If the content has been taken down at one of UseNeXT source providers, the UseNeXT index would still show up the file and allow downloading via one of the non-compliant Usenet Providers, such as News-Service.
Bottom line: UseNeXT users can upload infringing copies of Harry Potter into the Usenet network via UseNeXT. The content owner can remove the content on the global Usenet, but due to the un-compliant notice and takedown behavior of News Service as a vendor of UseNeXT and UseNeXT software solution, the content would be still available for UseNeXT users, although it would be gone for nearly all Usenet users worldwide.
Uncompliant providers are generally providers who are aware of an illegal movie on their server, are notified by the content owner or its representative about this copyright infringement, and still refuse to remove it. UseNeXT deals directly with such a vendor for its services – namely News Service.
Filtering of Copyright Infringements
Because UseNeXT provides a catalogue of content available via its platform instead of the full scope of content being available on the global Usenet, so it implements indexing, filtering, ordering, grouping, etc. it is also able to filter copyright infringements, due to the extended database functionalities added to the content.
One of the available and well-tested solutions on the market is the on-demand filtering methodology, which only analyzes content, being downloaded by at least one or more UseNeXT users. This way, not the full scope of content must be analyzed. Furthermore, content which is renamed, commented and rated positively should be included into the on-demand filtering. This due to the fact that 98% of the content renamed and commented on UseNeXT is a title, which is usually sold on the international market and not offered for free by the content owner or its distributors – so in most very usual cases a copyright infringement.
The on-demand filtering avoids hundred of million USD of losses for the copyright industries worldwide by an investment of a couple of ten-thousands of Euros on the other side for the content catalogue provider, such as UseNeXT.
Available solutions have already shown up, that multiple millions of infringing articles can be analyzed and filtered out on Usenet by someone having an overview of the files, so not being only a simple Usenet or Usenet Search Engine Provider, but a catalogue provider, such as UseNeXT.
The user base of Usenext is supposed to be at nearly 1 million members worldwide. Downloading from an illegal source, in that case content being uploaded from other users without the authorizatio nof the content owner, is mostly illegal, but the fact that the major copyright industry still has not started any sanctions or filtering methodes against such special providers like UseNeXTs, might let us think, that the downloading of pirated movies from this platform is tolerated.
At least we have to think it is tolerated, because we’re missing campaigns of big studios, such as Warner Bros. – we’re missing them, because they’ve been announced since 5 years for now: Heise.de – Warner Bros. Deutschland heuert Piratenjäger an (German)
Without fighting piracy on such platforms, legal content distribution projects will fail. Tolerating piracy is a disrespect towards artists, actors, producers, distributors and other contributors in the creative business.
Artists and creatives all around the world are eager to see their rights to be protected. Protected by people announcing and preaching to protect them.
You, the reader of this article – you can be the first person doing probably a better anti-piracy job then anti-piracy people did in the past due to this platform, by not downloading an illegal version of a movie when you will use UseNeXT the next time for downloading.
We’re confident, that creatives and artists will honor your behavior with respect, even though they don’t know you personally.
Staytned.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win ~ Mahatma Gandhi
buildblog.de – UseNeXT: Legitimate downloading of pirated movies, October 4, 2009
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October 14th, 2009 at 12:37 pm
read :
http://www.usenetshack.com/usenext-scam-review-usenet-provider/
and the reply from usenext : http://www.usenetshack.com/usenext-reply-user-review-services/
October 14th, 2009 at 1:09 pm
I think Usenet is unsafe, period.
It is identical to limewire but instead of peers and the GNutella network they have servers.
and unlike BitTorrent offer lax or no encryption and are unfiltered which malicous software may infect an end(paying) users PC So hmm…
October 14th, 2009 at 1:12 pm
and Jon I dont know how to Staytund lol
October 15th, 2009 at 1:07 am
“Whereas the Usenet is a real, peered and open network, UseNeXT is a closed environment. For the Usenet there exists a way to takedown infringing content automatically, but there is no standard way to takedown infringing content automatically at UseNeXT from the point of view of a third party not having access to the UseNeXT database.
The Usenet network understands the so-called “cancel” commands, whereby the UseNeXT search index won’t follow such cancel commands to remove infringing content.”
No legitimate Usenet provider obeys cancel commands. They’re too easy to forge and abuse. If they did, hackers would be cancelling posts all over the place, just for the fun of it.
@Comeoncomcast (aka Andrew)
“I think Usenet is unsafe, period.”
You’re wrong.
First of all, downloading and running an EXECUTABLE file from an unknown source is going to be unsafe no matter where you get the file from. If someone uploads an infected file to BitTorrent and you download and run it, your system will get infected. Sure, such torrents will probably get deleted off the major torrent sites, but what if you download it before that happens? Or you download it from a smaller site that hasn’t deleted it? Also note that this applies ONLY to executable files, not video, not audio, not pictures or anything else.
On Usenet, people DO upload infected executable files. However, if you actually read the particular group, rather than just using a search site and NZB files all the time, you will see that other users quickly post warnings when a post is fake or dangerous.
Then there’s the software itself. How many BitTorrent scams are there? From selling otherwise free software like uTorrent to shady companies providing a “client” that is full of malware. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a fake piece of Usenet software or one that came with malware. Some are free, some are commercial, but all seem legitimate.
“It is identical to limewire but instead of peers and the GNutella network they have servers.”
This is a blatant lie. Usenet operates nothing like a file sharing network. All P2P programs are designed to download directly from other users and to automatically upload everything you download to anyone who wants it. Usenet is one-way. You either download or you upload. You NEVER automatically upload anything unless you specifically want to upload. Even then, it wouldn’t be as easy as checking a box marked “Share”. There would be no point. You’re downloading from a newserver that already has a copy of the files. Uploading a second copy would be pointless and is in fact, greatly frowned upon as a waste of bandwidth. If you have something you want to post, you have to have to use a dedicated posting program (Otherwise it’s a lot of work and has a great potential for screwing up).
Additionally, since you ARE downloading from a central server, there’s no way that 3rd parties can monitor what you’re doing. Most legitimate Usenet providers don’t keep download logs, so even they don’t know what you’re downloading. They keep upload logs at least a few days, but in this respect, it’s no worse than uploading/sharing something on BitTorrent.
“and unlike BitTorrent offer lax or no encryption and are unfiltered which malicous software may infect an end(paying) users PC So hmm…”
What world are you living in?
Many large Usenet providers offer SSL encrypted connections, which is the same method used by banks, online store and others to encrypt sensitive information. Does BitTorrent support the use of SSL? The last I checked, the only “encryption” that BT clients offer encrypts the protocol headers, but not the actual data.
Secondly, the idea that just running a Usenet program and connecting to a newsserver can infect a user’s computer is beyond stupid. Usenet was designed as TEXT based medium and although some advances have been made in getting it to accept raw binary data, it’s not there yet. All files still need to be at least partially encoded and absolutely nothing is stored on the server in a from that will actually execute/run. All data is sent to the user’s system in either text, or encoded form, which must then be decoded by the client. There is nothing in the NNTP protocol that could possibly infect a user’s system.
Binary files are decoded by the Usenet client software back into their original form. At that point, if you have downloaded an infected executable and you decide to run it, your system can be infected, but this is no different than with BitTorrent.
About the only Usenet users at risk are those who are stupid enough to think that Outlook Express actually qualifies as a newsreader. They like it because of the preview pane, which is exactly what puts them at risk, since it will launch ANY type of file regardless of what it is. All modern Usenet clients that include a preview pane, restrict it to only viewing images (and not using any of MS’s buggy code) and have safeguards in place to prevent the launching of executable files or any other type of file that might potentially be unsafe, without your consent.
Not to mention that, barring unforseen problems, the download speed from a good Usenet provider is as fast as your internet connection allows. BitTorrent speeds fluctuate from good, on recent uploads to pathetic on anything that’s more than six months old.
October 15th, 2009 at 1:10 am
Gee, add a “-” to the supposedly not-banned word and the post goes through…
October 15th, 2009 at 1:15 am
I also forgot to mention that I’ve never considered UseNeXT a legitimate company. Not only do they spam their ads all over the place, half the supposed “download” links on the net just lead to their web site. “Want to download this file faster? Click here!”