Is this the beginning of the end?

[OldIronTits]

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[Hypatia]

Aye, aye!

[zot]

Does anyone know if there any transcripts (Dutch or English) available anywhere?

Since BREIN is heavily bankrolled by Hollywood,which has more than enough money to buy out every last politician and Judge in that tiny country, I expect the historic Dutch copyright haven will end in due time, and we'll need to move on to a friendlier country.

I don't know the facts of the News-Service case (or Dutch law), but unless I'm missing something, I don't understand how a judgement like that could stand, any more than ordering an ISP to retroactively block all warez-related content where ever it might exist. Unlike P2P networks like Napster, Kazaa, and Limewire, at least usenet has history squarely on its side, as it was never designed nor intended for sharing files (let alone copyrighted files). But unlike P2P, a usenet provider has the ability to remove any content on demand. So BREIN and its Hollywood backers could have wiped out any NNTP server with takedown requests alone, but that would have taken real work. Much easier and cheaper to shift the burden of responsibility to the server's owner.

News-Service was a wholesale-only NNTP provider, basically a pass-through NNTP service, yet somehow the company is considered responsible for all content posted on its servers by people it has no direct relationship to? The only (possible) decision made by the provider is which groups to include. The group names were apparently considered by the judge as promoting infringement just by their very name. I seem to remember in the Mininova lawsuit transcripts, the plaintiff's lawyer kept driving in the fact that moderators actively sought out and removed things like (child) pornography, while at the same time ignoring obvious infringements like first-run movies. Similarly, I expect that a USP's decision to decline child-porn group names will be presented as proof that they actively monitor and control content (like arguing that if a USP can do such a thorough job keeping child porn out, why not copyright infringements also?).

But in a conceivable worse case scenario, if News-Service removes all groups with names that begin with "alt.binaries" (and for the sake of argument all other USPs the world over do the same) uploaders could just start posting binaries in vacant text groups or just scattering them all over: downloading via headers would obviously not work if articles are scattered, but NZBs would (conceivably) be unaffected, at least until the articles are targeted by some kind of technological strategy.

It would interesting to see if binary posting clients in the future could scatter the articles into several different groups while giving every article a random name, so that a file could only be found via NZB, similar to the way a few anonymous P2P networks have been set up to be unbrowseable. If providers like News-Service are forced to take down entire groups, posting random articles might be the way to evade such a block.

[Beck38]

Ever since the DMCA became law in the USA, I wondered at the dawn of every day why Hollywood et. al. didn't simply set up a small group of folks (50 would do it) to simply scour the newsgroups and generate take-down orders as an industrial process.

For whatever reasoning (or lack thereof) they decided to spend years and years concentrating on P2P, generating a huge backlash against their tactics everywhere from the justice system to the common 'man on the street'.

Like you say, going after the newsgroups would kinda be like 'whack a mole' , and folks simply using either 'short cut' naming conventions and other simple techniques would mean that more and more effort would be needed to 'whack' those moles. But come on, this is an industry that spends millions to enforce it's ratings system, the effort needed to put a serious crimp on newsgroups would be a pittance compared to the effort on P2P.

It really has appeared over the years that usenet has simply not been on the 'radar', but perhaps now they are simply going after 'low hanging fruit'. Since the world's legal systems have been proven time and again to be 'for sale' to the highest bidder, at this point I'd day that the Dutch were simply, at that level of their system, the 'cheapest' to buy. We'll see as it moves it's way through that system, and how many operations simply pick up and move a a couple hundred miles in any direction.

[mjmacky]

You mentioned something there Beck that I had forgotten about. I now withdraw my bid to ever spend money on another film or tv show until they do away with both DRM and the ratings system. There are so many reasons to hate the industry, that I forget some of them.

[Beck38]

Well, here is the latest thing that the pols are spending their time on at the bidding of the 'copyright trolls', crafting laws to send Justin Bieber to prison:

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...er-felon.shtml

Those hordes of folks sent to state and federal offices last year to 'fix' the 'jobs crises' spent, of course, all their time on things like this, plus making sure their real masters got more tax breaks, voting rights were curtailed or eliminated, access to health care (except for those with 'platinum cards') was as well, and just about everything BUT that which would both create jobs and to anything to fix the countries infrastructure.

I point out to my neighbors all the time that the main freeway in town here hasn't had a complete redo on the roadway since it was built, 50 years ago when I was in grade school. It's a joke, 50 years of summers and harsh winters. We have a couple major bridges that are way past their lifespans, they could sink/fall into the waterways just about at any time (they were last built/replaced again, in the 60's, when folks actually still built things instead of trying to make money by legal actions).

What was it that B. Franklin said about the lawyers? Oh, yes...

[mjmacky]

Oh I see, Justin Bieber was just an example of the consequence of the law. For a second there, I thought they were making it illegal to be Justin Bieber, and I came dangerously close to feeling a calm satisfaction.

One of my guesses is that streaming movies probably account for most instances of privacy. I'm only extracting, but if I examine 20 people I know it breaks down this way:
1 knows how to fileshare
1 kind of knows how to fileshare but watches streaming sites instead
8 purely watch streaming sites as an act of copyright infringement
8 rely solely on their cable boxes
2 have bankrupted themselves on dvds/boxsets/cds and are currently awaiting for credit card approvals to blow a wad on blurays.

Netflix and Hulu are better attempts at reducing streaming piracy than this law would even dream to accomplish, it's really late to the game and without proper logic.

[cola]

The only way they'll win is if they try to compete with piracy. Otherwise, piracy will always be easier.

[Sporkk]

Netflix is possibly going bankrupt. The studios charge to much money to have stuff available for streaming. I think it was a mistake for them to put so much in and not focus on dvd by mail as the priority. If you don't want to buy a movie often netflix is the only legal way to rent it by disc. It is a true alternative to pirating but you have to wait a bit (or a lot) longer. I've been trying to get away from usenet and having some success. I have a htpc recording network tv shows, access to hbo go from a family member, gf has netflix, and Amazon prime has just added streaming as another perk. I think I read somewhere that they are even trying to take away ota broadcasts in the USA! With some tv shows I actually prefer to wait until the entire season is available since they always cancel stuff or it starts sucking half way through.

[Beck38]

Netflix is possibly going bankrupt.

Not anytime soon, unless their CEO makes more completely STUPID ideas (now retracted) of splitting up between physical discs and streaming. Of course, at any time the Repubs could crater the Post Office (they almost already have with the 2006 'lame duck' law forcing them to pay for the retirements IN ADVANCE, so that they are now trying to put 40 years of retiree pensions into escrow in a few short years), or all the ISP's decided to go full hog on capping all the internet connections to absurdly low amounts.

Many studio's put 'FOR SALE ONLY' and 'NOT FOR RENTAL' tags on their discs, trying to stop Netflix and others from buying retail discs and renting them. That didn't work.

I don't know how many times they think they can sell and re-sell things over and over ad. infinitum. They've so screwed up the copyright laws (and gotten the courts to go along with it) that virtually nothing becomes 'public domain' anymore. Same with patents and such. No drug developed in the last 30 years will EVER become generic. Never. Not in the U.S.