What's happening to Usenet ?

[Beck38]

You are using someone else's intellectual property and manipulating it to your own advantage in order to profit from it. That's illegal in most people's books.

Okay, lets take two of the richest people in the US (if not on the planet), who developed the machines we are on using:

Steve Jobs CEO of Apple, Inc. His theft of 'intellectual property' from Xerox (to create the first Macintosh) is extremely well documented. Before that little heist, he (along with co-conspirator Steve Wozniak) built and sold several millions of dollars worth of so-called 'Blue Boxes', that allowed their users to freely utilize the AT&T long distance voice system, as it existed at the time (mid-late 1970's). This was the 'seed money' that allowed them to found Apple, Inc.

At about the same time, Bill Gates managed to hood-wink IBM, Inc., into signing an open-ended contract to provide an operating system for their soon to be released 'personal computer'. Mr. Gates managed to do two things at once: First, steal key components to the system he (and partner Paul Allen), used to that make that software code, merged it with pieces they did buy (but under false pretenses), from a small software development firm in Seattle.

All of this is extremely well documented. Microsoft, Inc., was a little more 'in compliance' with the law vs. Apple (after all, Gates father was a high-end corporate attorney), but more than a bit lacking in other areas. Microsoft is still to this day wrangling in court over issues they have managed to forestall final judgment on for well over 30 years.

It might be mentioned that the 'PC' as it exists today, does so because of the theft of the original IBM BIOS firmware, 'reverse engineered' from the original IBM system by firms such as AMI (American Megatrends) and Phoenix Technologies, among others. IBM initially sued them all for patent infringement, but over a period of 10 years, as IBM itself divested itself of the 'PC' market, dropped it's suits.

Many firms got their start when these pirated chipsets first arrived on the market, most notably DELL computer.

A long and winding road. But the upshot is, NONE of these 'Titans Of Industry' has clean hands. ALL of them are thieves of one sort or another. HOW they avoided (and still avoid) long terms in the 'Super-Max' is now more a function of their immense wealth and political connections, rather than real justice.

But that's how capitalism works. The recent theft of trillions of dollars notwithstanding, Gates/Jobs/etc are small fry.

[brilman]

well said Beck38 I remember the days

[Beck38]

A couple interesting thoughts for today:

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/W...rstated-107886

no kidding...

and today's roundup of internet crushing folks...

http://www.dslreports.com/shownews/F...GB-Caps-107885

and the response...

http://stopthecap.com/

I live in one of those Verizon areas (including a rather huge FIOS plant that stopped expanding about 3 miles up the road), that is trying to be sold off to Frontier. Only 'competition' (a VERY poor word) from high cost/250GB capped service Comcast. Pray for me.

AND our state AG is a Republican, who has already shown his (anti-consumer) stripes!

[Beck38]

Here's about the best recent run-down on Jobs/Apple:

http://www.slate.com/id/2250993/

Titled 'Apple Wants To Own You'.

[link2009]

Beck38,

Judging from most of these posts here, it seems like you are still living in 1985.

Many laws have changed, we are losing privacy laws much quicker than before and copyright infringement is highly frowned upon nowadays. This all happened since the fall of the iron curtain (AKA Communism) but I won't get into that. Since you want to talk about politics and capitalism, let's just leave it at :
"Bill Gates profited during a very exploitable time period" and his invention has actually changed human kind as we know it.

I watched Pirates of Silicon Valley, I've seen documentaries and I cannot believe (unless I am misinterpreting your actions) that you are comparing what Bill Gates and Steve Jobs did with copyright infringement on Usenet.

The premise is simple and all indexers will be attacked by civil or federal courts soon enough. As long as your website is primarily aiding your customers to hunt for copyright infringing material, you are directly responsible for that content. This is what got to Newzbin. You didn't see any text groups on there, so it was mostly a huge collection of pirates warez (movies/apps/games).

Just my 2 cents. Don't try to defend something you know is technically wrong.

[Beck38]

Britain is a Monarchy, a DINO (democracy in name only).

There is no constitution, no bill of rights, no 'rule of law'. Law is whatever the 'nobs' (nobility) say it is.

That is why Newzbin was so easily taken apart. In the US, there's this small thing called 'free speech', and even though there is the DMCA, it has been hacked apart every time it ends up in court, to the point where at present, it's only a shadow of it's original intent.

The US Supreme Court decided just in the last couple of days that Free Speech means that dog torture videos are okay, even though state law said they were illegal, both from animal protection laws and distribution of torture video laws. THATS how strong FREE SPEECH is protected by the constitution.

There are dozens of nzb sites in the US, and of course most of the largest usenet servers are headquartered here. The DMCA and common carrier laws protect them, and none have been 'attacked' by the spurious claims that were brought against Newzbin. In the US, it would have been laughed out of court.

There are attempts to come up with a 'new' 'super DMCA', but it will take a huge push in Congress to attempt to pass such legislation, and the lawmakers are under intense review by citizens and news organizations right now for taking large sums of money (called 'bribes') from both wall street and the insurance companies, plus the still ongoing problems with the 2003 'mickey mouse forever' ruling which gave Disney a virtual unlimited copyright (in direct opposition to the constitution, which BANS unlimited copyrights), and it's simply 'too hot to touch' politically.

Then, of course, the Supreme Court can decide that non-people (i.e. corporations) have 'super-rights', so anything can happen, just like they decided wacky slavery laws 150 years ago.

But as it stands right now, it would be interesting to see the **AA's go after somebody in the U.S. What it tells me, is that free market/enterprise is working, in that the 'product' is simply way over-priced (Hollywood believes 1000% profit is too little); if they sold there product more in line for what it's actually WORTH, there would be no 'piracy'. BR/DVD's are made for <$1/ea, so sell them for $5 and you'd kill anything going on now, still make 500% profit.

But they're simply too Greedy. Again, the free market is working.

[cat123]

I didn't mind downloading headers. Jut took a while.