BREIN Plans to Move against NZB Sites

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BREIN Plans to Move against NZB Sites
March 14, 2009

" Ask just about anyone these days where the pulse of the file-sharing community is, and the most likely answer will probably be BitTorrent. Despite all the glory and power that BitTorrent has, however, it's tough to ignore one thorny issue that's beginning to grind into the entertainment industry: the newsgroups.

For those who only know BitTorrent, the newsgroups are a tough sell. There's no uploading, no peer swarm, and of course you have to pay. All these things superficially appear contrary to what BitTorrent and P2P stand for. But there's little denying that once the newsgroups have you hooked, all other methods of file-sharing seem a bit juvenile.

So it should come as little surprise that BREIN, the Dutch anti-piracy organization pressing legal action against MiniNova, is preparing action against Usenet sites.

"In 2009 BREIN goes on full strength ahead. Already 81 illegal sites were shut down in the first two months of this year. The Mininova case is set for hearing and BREIN will summon several sites exploiting Usenet. 'Sites who structurally link to illegal content have to take preventive measures or cease operations', says BREIN director Tim Kuik. 'The same goes for websites who host illegal content.'"

Some of the big players in the Netherlands include the indexing sites alt.binaries.nl and nzbindex.nl. None of these sites are specifically mentioned in BREIN’s statement, and it remains unknown what sites may be targeted. Our questions about which Usenet sites might face legal action were not answered at time of publication.

Indexing sites that host NZB files have come under increasing fire recently, with the MPA filing legal action against NewzBin.com late last year. However, ridding the internet of the Usenet menace is much more problematic than eliminating BitTorrent websites or trackers. There’s the news server at the heart of the newsgroup community, and with the ISP safe harbor provision protecting these entities, the newsgroups will be around long after their P2P contemporaries have vanished. "

:source: Source: BREIN Plans to Move against NZB Sites

What does this mean exactly?

Well it means newsgroups are now under the same scope as Torrents And ed2k Links .

It means nothing.

Remove all the NZB sites (will never happen) and what do you have?
You still have Usenet, lol.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

Well it means newsgroups are now under the same scope as Torrents And ed2k Links .

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Fuck!, We're doomed :frusty:.

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Originally Posted by Broken

It means nothing.

Remove all the NZB sites (will never happen) and what do you have?
You still have Usenet, lol.

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Um, yes it does, because once they do that, then ultimately they will move to the ISP/News Servers...don't give us that tired crap, Newsgroups are on the "radar" if you don't think so, then you are very, very naive :P

It was going to happen eventually I guess.

The way usenet is setup it can never be fully taken down. There is no one central server there are thousands spread from here to BFE and back. Even if say the leading ones where taken down like giga and astra there are thousands more. So no worry's.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

...For those who only know BitTorrent, the newsgroups are a tough sell. There's no uploading, no peer swarm, and of course you have to pay...

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This always makes me laugh when people pay many times that of a top notch encrypted usenet connection for a seedbox that gets it on your drive no quicker.

Weren't there problems some time back? I know of some sites that only spot rather than host nzb files anymore...

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

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Originally Posted by Broken

It means nothing.

Remove all the NZB sites (will never happen) and what do you have?
You still have Usenet, lol.

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Um, yes it does, because once they do that, then ultimately they will move to the ISP/News Servers...don't give us that tired crap, Newsgroups are on the "radar" if you don't think so, then you are very, very naive :P

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Your statement is so misguided I could write an entire essay on pointing out it's wrongness.

Usenet is not some P2P program. It's not torrents or ed2k.
Usenet is not some upstart thing that is just making it's way to the surface.

In form, function, and legality it is the same the "web" and the providers as your ISP. For all intents and purposes Usenet is the original internet that just never died. Do you think someone is going to shut down the internet because it's possible to Google copyrighted material on the internet, lol?


What your ENTIRE post about is NZB sites.
Are they nice? Sure!
Are they needed? Fuck no. Remove the NZB sites and all you do is make is harder, if not impossible, for the droves of noobs that don't know what they are doing to download files.

NZBs are God's gift to the idiotic masses that dumbed things down enough to make Usenet so easy to use that a brain dead chimp could do it.

Remove every NZB site, all that would be accomplished is... well, nothing.
The content is still there. If you have even a basic understanding of Usenet it isn't even that much harder to find.

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Originally Posted by Broken

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

Um, yes it does, because once they do that, then ultimately they will move to the ISP/News Servers...don't give us that tired crap, Newsgroups are on the "radar" if you don't think so, then you are very, very naive :P

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Your statement is so misguided I could write an entire essay on pointing out it's wrongness.

Usenet is not some P2P program. It's not torrents or ed2k.
Usenet is not some upstart thing that is just making it's way to the surface.

In form, function, and legality it is the same the "web" and the providers as your ISP. For all intents and purposes Usenet is the original internet that just never died. Do you think someone is going to shut down the internet because it's possible to Google copyrighted material on the internet, lol?


What your ENTIRE post about is NZB sites.
Are they nice? Sure!
Are they needed? Fuck no. Remove the NZB sites and all you do is make is harder, if not impossible, for the droves of noobs that don't know what they are doing to download files.

NZBs are God's gift to the idiotic masses that dumbed things down enough to make Usenet so easy to use that a brain dead chimp could do it.

Remove every NZB site, all that would be accomplished is... well, nothing.
The content is still there. If you have even a basic understanding of Usenet it isn't even that much harder to find.

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You said too much. I have to kill you now.

#1 Rule: don't talk about Usenet, #2 rule: Usenet doesn't exist. :whistling

Let them be ignorant and believe what they want. It will keep us out of sight and filter out the unwanted.

So, you do not think Astraweb or Giganews, or any of the ISP still giving access to usenet are not fealing pressure from and anti-piracy organization? That's ludacris if no one thinks it's been monitored in some form of another...I love my NG access, but it will get pressure eventually.

No they are not.
They are not selling newsgroups any more than than Timewarner is selling websites.

They are simply selling access to a service.

I think people don't understand how Usenet is setup. Usenet is basically like the internet, a bunch of servers connected together. Giganews gives access to all other servers that are connected to Usenet. The only pressure Giganews gets is when a user uploads copyright stuff to their servers and that's when they take it down. However, they can't control another server within Usenet.

EDIT: Usenet servers come under "common carrier" laws and regulations, like the phone company. The telcos cannot be sued for what they carry (example: like a bomb threat), or satellite companies (example: Playboy or Howard Stern) as they come under "common carrier" laws. In fact, they are required to carry any and all paid traffic.

Well I remember that they can, remember most places/ISP's dropped newsgroups/news because of the threat of kiddie porn.

They drop Usenet because they are expensive in both time and money to upkeep and have a relatively small user base.
A good number of ISP still offer Usenet but outsource it to carriers like giganews, because of those reasons.

Those that drop it altogther see few complaints because only a small group of people use them.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

Well I remember that they can, remember most places/ISP's dropped newsgroups/news because of the threat of kiddie porn.

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Most ISPs didn't carry those sort of groups.
In fact the majority didn't carry even the warez or mp3 groups.

The don't carry alt.binaries or they are dropping them.

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

The don't carry alt.binaries or they are dropping them.

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With Usenet every provider is responsible for carrying their own, complete copy of Usenet for their users on their own servers.
These providers mirror the messages, be it binary or text groups, from every other provider.

Because Usenet is somewhat orderly, in where people post things.
A provider can easily exclude groups like alt.binaries from the copy of Usenet they provide, and just carry the groups that are dedicated to text.

ISPs are dropping or outsourcing Usenet not because of legal reasons, but the expense associated with them.
As for them dropping Usenet because of kiddie porn, that's BS... link.
It's all about their bottom line.

Giganews posted that about K porn, it's in their news section, and the reason their giving discounts to AT&T subscribers because they are afraid of the k porn(AT&T), but we all know it's because of mass distrubtion of files :)

I read an article, I seriously think that their are people watching, not that much, but there is some risk..

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There is a lot going on in the usenet industry these days. A lot of providers worked hard to increase their retention and are closing up on Giganews 365 Days. But Giganews wasn't sleeping at all, they were just working on other things - SSL access to their servers! Since other providers are joining the trend of usenet ssl access, we think it's time to clear up some questions.

History And Facts

It started where there were numerous requests by users to get this service.Giganews was certainly willing to encrypt the login sequence to protect their user from password sniffing - But such a limited feature is simply not in the NNTP standard. The only thing possible is encrypting all the traffic which creates a lot of additional CPU load on the servers - According to the giganews engineers that?s a staggering 200% -300%more load. Some of you might not know that CPU load is already a big issue for usenet providers, as their servers have to do quite a lot of work to retrieve thousands of articles from a database; the size of a few hundred Terebytes, this is often the main reason why ?cheap? providers offer slower speeds. The big providers use hundreds of frontend servers to spread the load which is a large addition to their bandwidth costs and also a reason why some enforce their ?Acceptable Usage Policy?.

Giganews therefore charges an extra 5$ a month for the SSL service (Astraweb doesn't), which seems fair considering the additional costs. Astraweb and Usenetserver offers it for all users in addition to their massively increased retention - Let?s hope that doesn?t affect their overall quality.

Does It Protect You From Legal Consequences?
No. The traffic still gets decrypted at giganews end and they are still forced to keep their logs, just with a regular account. Authorities were able to get the necessary information from the NSPs in the past and they will be able to do the same even if you posted your files with SSL encryption. But you have to be aware that there are different levels of illegal activities:

Copyright infringement by downloading
If you are downloading content that is protected by copyright law, this is illegal. However in most countries this is not enough to start an investigation and get the necessary court order to get your NSPs logs!

Posting copyright protected content
This is usually a bigger violation of the law and can get you in troubles depending on the country you live in - Whether the traffic was encrypted or not.

Real crimes
there are other illegal things you could do, such as posting child pornography.This is a real crime, and you can be sure to go to jail for such things. NSPs are also much more willing to cooperate in such matters, and you better start training not to drop your soap instead of trying to hide behind SSL- It won't protect you.

Where You Should Worry About Privacy?

It gets complicated when it comes to the laws about privacy in your country.If your ISP is bound not to look at your traffic anyway, why encrypt it.However there are countries were such laws either don?t exist, or the providers simply don?t care - Like the USA. We know of one case were a large cable internet provider threatened one of their subscribers with a letter containing a list of what he downloaded from a usenet provider - And you certainly don?t what them to know that when you already have problems with them using the unlimited amount of traffic as stated in your contract.

Even if you are lucky to have laws that prevents your provider from inspecting your packets, there are still locations where privacy should be a concern to you:

Access Usenet On Wireless Networks?

Most of them aren?t secure and packet sniffing is a piece of cake. If you don?t want your neighbours to see what groups you are accessing, you might want to encrypt your traffic.

Accessing Usenet on large networks, especially at work?

Every piece of network equipment that connects you to your NSP can be used for packet sniffing. There are a lot of companies that scan the internet traffic to spot employees that spend their time doing things that clearly has nothing to do with their job - Such as alt.binaries.erotica. Since there is a lot more at stake than just a NSP contract, you really should encrypt your private data - But be aware that a lot of traffic might also indicate a possible reason to fire you

Pleasant Side-Effect Of SSL?

While in many cases SSL doesn't really improve your privacy that much, there is an interesting side-effect when using SSL. It can circumvent your providers traffic shaping! Traffic shaping (limiting your bandwidth depending on theusedservice) was traditionally done based on the port you connect to. Port 119 is the standard for usenet-access, if a provider wants to limit your bandwidth for usenet but still let you browse the web at full speed, they can simply throttle all connections to that port. For some time most providers started to offer access on alternative ports - Even ports which are the standard for other services your provider certainly doesn't want to limit - Such as port 80(Web /HTTP).

Some providers now use new technology that determines the used service based the contents of the packets. Even if you send your packages through the port normally used for web browsing, the commands inside this package are clearly used for NNTP. When you are using SSL, all this information gets encrypted and there is no way for your provider to know what these packages are for, and a lot of users have already reported increased speeds! But be aware that you still have to worry about port based traffic shaping if you are using port 563 (the standard for NNTPS, encrypted usenet). Giganews has therefore recently added support on port 443, the standard for HTTPs - A protocol no provider wants to limit.

This effectively defeats all known traffic shaping systems - But be aware that the more users do this, the more this will once again become a concern to those providers, and they still have some weapons left - Like limiting all traffic originating from the NSPs networks.

Conclusion
If you are a victim of such traffic shaping or have reason to ensure your privacy, you should definitively get the SSL service! If you are not, and you are in full control over your own network and you know your provider is not allowed to inspect your packets anyway, you should probably save the money and spare the additional CPU load for your NSP.

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Originally Posted by start

I think people don't understand how Usenet is setup. Usenet is basically like the internet, a bunch of servers connected together. Giganews gives access to all other servers that are connected to Usenet. The only pressure Giganews gets is when a user uploads copyright stuff to their servers and that's when they take it down. However, they can't control another server within Usenet.

EDIT: Usenet servers come under "common carrier" laws and regulations, like the phone company. The telcos cannot be sued for what they carry (example: like a bomb threat), or satellite companies (example: Playboy or Howard Stern) as they come under "common carrier" laws. In fact, they are required to carry any and all paid traffic.

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Hello?

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Originally Posted by start

You said too much. I have to kill you now.

#1 Rule: don't talk about Usenet, #2 rule: Usenet doesn't exist. :whistling

Let them be ignorant and believe what they want. It will keep us out of sight and filter out the unwanted.

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Anybody home?

Hello? I use usenet, I'm protecting myself.

"Most human beings have an almost infinite capacity for taking things for granted."

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Originally Posted by SonsOfLiberty

I read an article, I seriously think that their are people watching, not that much, but there is some risk..

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They (you know who) will go after the people that upload in some cases, but it's not easy to do.
The service providers are required to keep records of people submitting articles to Usenet. They will release this information without much of a fight... if they have it.

Because the servers mirror one another, the post will be on every provider but the logs of who uploaded it is only held by the provider where the post originated. There's no good way to trace the post to the original server other than guessing, so it's not a very good way of going about things because there are a lot of odd ball servers of there and would take a lot of doing to get results.

Downloads, are unlogged and untraceable.
You don't know who's downloading or what to start with, and there's no record of who did it. The only way for someone to know what you're downloading would be to backdoor the service provider you are using. NO service provider would allow this to happen, it would cause a tremendous loss of confidence in the people using it, and legally I would think wiretapping laws would prevent this without a warrant.

But because there is no probably cause to start with good luck getting a warrant.... It's that whole vicious cycle thing.

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Originally Posted by Broken

But because there is no probably cause to start with good luck getting a warrant.... It's that whole vicious cycle thing.

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Another victorious win for Usenet users :lol:

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Originally Posted by sdwillie

Hello?

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Originally Posted by start

You said too much. I have to kill you now.

#1 Rule: don't talk about Usenet, #2 rule: Usenet doesn't exist. :whistling

Let them be ignorant and believe what they want. It will keep us out of sight and filter out the unwanted.

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Anybody home?

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I was clearly being sarcastic. If anybody wants to know about Usenet, they'd Google it and have the information.