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Thread: future of newsgroups?

  1. #1
    hi all,

    just wondered what peoples views were following the ruling of the riaa case over usenet.com. will we start seeing providers get closed down? or an end to usenet completely? or is usenet going to continue as it has been?

    thank you

  2. Newsgroups   -   #2
    ericab's Avatar Poster BT Rep: +6BT Rep +6
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    with the obama administration running wild as they are (bunch of fu**ing charlatans) , i wouldnt put it past them;
    the good news however is usenet.com got in trouble because they blatantly advertised their service as a source of warez, as well as encouraging it on their website, and through their support reps.
    giganews and astraweb at least do not boast such claims. im no lawyer, but it would seem to me they are going to be safe for some time, especially if they comply with DMCA takedown notices from the studios who request them.
    but even dmca's wont stop us from sharing; we'll just obfruscate the rar/zip filenames, and password protect them, if it really comes down to it.
    Last edited by ericab; 07-02-2009 at 09:36 PM.
    An Excerpt from: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
    by John Perry Barlow
    Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather [...] I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.
    Read more here

  3. Newsgroups   -   #3
    lets hope so...would that be the same for newsdemon etc? usenet was about years before digital mp3 and video flooded it. and isn't usenet similar to the internet, by hosts and servers not just in US but in UK, Sweden, Netherlands etc? surely the US can not govern the other countries as well, so saying that can usenet ever disappear?

  4. Newsgroups   -   #4
    ericab's Avatar Poster BT Rep: +6BT Rep +6
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    Quote Originally Posted by djkemp1 View Post
    and isn't usenet similar to the internet, by hosts and servers not just in US but in UK, Sweden, Netherlands etc? surely the US can not govern the other countries as well
    the reason i specifically stated the USA was because we are home to the largest usenet farms (providers) in the world.
    the big 3:
    Highwinds,
    Giganews
    Astraweb.
    just about any other "provider" you run into are resellers, so its not like their are hundreds of server farms as it would seem, since usnet resellers are a dime a dozen.
    point is, if the usenet farms (USA) take a hit; usenet as a whole loses a huge percentage of content, and user-base which would definitely put a damper on the contined growth of other non-USA farms.

    in effect it would seem like usenet "disappeared" but it would most likely still have a footprint in foreign countries...
    Last edited by ericab; 07-02-2009 at 09:47 PM.
    An Excerpt from: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
    by John Perry Barlow
    Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather [...] I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.
    Read more here

  5. Newsgroups   -   #5
    newsgroupie
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    Quote Originally Posted by ericab View Post
    but even dmca's wont stop us from sharing; we'll just obfruscate the rar/zip filenames, and password protect them, if it really comes down to it.
    I predict that the "NZB" file itself will become encrypted.

    I think that in the not-too-distant future the "NZB" could be encrypted as well, so that the post IDs will stay hidden, making it all-but-impossible to trace where on usenet the file is actually located. And since the exact location of the articles on the usenet server can't be determined, the files can't be deleted.

    Of course, a debugger/disassembler could be used to break the "NZB" encryption (as one was used to reverse the CSS encryption on DVDs) but cracking encryption this way would be illegal in the USA and other countries.

    The main problem is that proprietary newsreader software would be required to read an encrypted "NZB"

  6. Newsgroups   -   #6
    ericab's Avatar Poster BT Rep: +6BT Rep +6
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    just had an idea...
    how about an application which decentralizes the propagation of nzb files to the end user, so relying on nzb search engines wouldn't be a thing of the past. (especially good since sites like newzbin are under active legal litigation...eventually the sites may be forced to shutdown due to *aiding* in the act of downloading intellectual property)

    the above (decentralized nzb downloads) coupled with encrypting the identifiers contained within the NZB file (as zot has suggested), rar/zip name obfuscation and rar/zip encryption seems like an amazing solution.
    Last edited by ericab; 07-02-2009 at 11:41 PM.
    An Excerpt from: A Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace
    by John Perry Barlow
    Governments of the Industrial World, you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather [...] I declare the global social space we are building to be naturally independent of the tyrannies you seek to impose on us.
    Read more here

  7. Newsgroups   -   #7
    We survived quite well before the creation of NZB's. If they were to disappear tomorrow, we'd go back to reading the headers.

    Usenet is distributed among a large, constantly changing conglomeration of servers that store and forward messages to one
    another (distributed content). Taking a file off of one server, does not remove it from all of them (even if the server in question
    is the one it was originally posted to). The same method applies to nzb's.

    An nzb created at Newzbin would point to servers in the Netherlands. An nzb on the same content, created on a Giganews
    account, would point to a server in the USA. Encrypted nzb's would serve no purpose.

    Obama could shut down Usenet (in the US) if he choose to, and that's the only way I believe it could happen. Giganews has
    offshore servers. Other providers do as well.

    Anonymous Usenet is coming. Patience.
    Last edited by Wwwildthing; 07-03-2009 at 01:33 AM.

  8. Newsgroups   -   #8
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    Quote Originally Posted by Wwwildthing View Post
    Encrypted nzb's would serve no purpose.
    An encrypted "NZB" - if such a thing were ever developed - would serve two purposes.

    By masking the actual article numbers (post IDs) that comprise the file, thereby hiding the file's location, an encrypted "NZB" would help:

    1. eliminate the possibility of files being deleted from the server (due to takedown requests)

    2. hide the identity of the poster (the post headers can't be gleaned for information since the actual post IDs are unknown)

    The downside is that an encrypted "NZB" could no longer be an open standard, as it is now, but would need to be a proprietary (closed source) format that could only be read by a proprietary (closed source) newsreader.
    Last edited by zot; 07-03-2009 at 05:54 AM.

  9. Newsgroups   -   #9
    iLOVENZB's Avatar FST Crew BT Rep: +1
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    Quote Originally Posted by djkemp1 View Post
    will we start seeing providers get closed down? or an end to usenet completely? or is usenet going to continue as it has been?
    Some providers samller may fall under the heat from the RIAA (I doubt it though), but the larger providers like Giganews/Astraweb won't be taken down lightly.

    As for Usenet getting taken down completely I HIGHLY doubt it. Usenet isn't just for binaries, it's other use is a discussion board, so this argument will be used in many defenses.
    "Computer games don't affect kids; I mean if Pac-Man affected us as kids, we'd all be running around in darkened rooms, munching magic pills and listening to repetitive electronic music"

  10. Newsgroups   -   #10
    Quote Originally Posted by zot View Post
    Quote Originally Posted by Wwwildthing View Post
    Encrypted nzb's would serve no purpose.
    An encrypted "NZB" - if such a thing were ever developed - would serve two purposes.

    By masking the actual article numbers (post IDs) that comprise the file, thereby hiding the file's location, an encrypted "NZB" would help:

    1. eliminate the possibility of files being deleted from the server (due to takedown requests)

    2. hide the identity of the poster (the post headers can't be gleaned for information since the actual post IDs are unknown)

    The downside is that an encrypted "NZB" could no longer be an open standard, as it is now, but would need to be a proprietary (closed source) format that could only be read by a proprietary (closed source) newsreader.
    1) The 'files' are spread across dozens (if not hundreds) of servers. Removing it from one server, does not remove it from the rest.
    2) Posters have been hiding their idenity since Day One. That was about 10 years before the Internet became available to the public.

    I pulled the following nzb from 2 different indexing sites - Total.Rugby.02.07.09.WS.PDTV.XviD-FTP

    NZBMatrix - [email protected] (somewhere in the Netherlands)
    Poster - [email protected]

    NZBs(dot)Org - [email protected]
    Poster - [email protected]

    A 'ping' of bin-reg.net returns a 'host not found' response.

    Again, the 'headers' are sent in plain text and clearly readable by any usenet client. Encrypting the nzb's (which are created from the header information) would serve no purpose.
    Last edited by Wwwildthing; 07-03-2009 at 07:28 PM.

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