Newzbin Usenet Indexer Shuts Down After Court Defeat

**Rart** · 05-18-2010, 10:20 PM

Newzbin Usenet Indexer Shuts Down After Court Defeat
May 18, 2010

" Newzbin, the Internet’s premier Usenet indexer, has pulled the plug today marking the end of an era. The operators of the site cite the lost legal battle against the MPA as the main reason for the shutdown. Apparently, the court case drained the site’s financial resources.

Newzbin is one of the original Usenet indexing sites and the creator of the immensely-popular .NZB format, which opened up simplified Usenet downloading to the masses.

While the major BitTorrent sites were in Hollywood’s spotlights as the major source of copyright infringement, Usenet sites such as Newzbin remained untouched.

This changed, however, when the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the MPAA’s big brother, sent a threatening letter to the site’s operators in 2008.

This letter was followed by an official announcement of a lawsuit against the Usenet indexer early 2009. The case eventually went to the High Court in February of this year where Newzbin was found liable for copyright infringement.

The court ordered the company that operates the site to stop indexing movies and TV shows to which the Hollywood studios own the copyrights. In addition, Newzbin was told to pay court costs for the MPA, which apparently bankrupted their operation.

“Regrettably the Newzbin website has to close as a result of the legal action against us,” the site’s visitors can now read on Newzbin’s homepage.

The Usenet indexer is linking to a blog post which has additional details on Newzbin’s troubles.

“Apparently Newzbin has been put into administration yesterday because it couldn’t pay its debts. Word is that they owe the MPA £230,000 just in interim costs, and that’s without a full costs ruling or a decision on damages. Apparently they also owe a software development house over £500k,” it reads.

Thus far we haven’t been able to verify the legitimacy of these claims with the Newzbin team, but since the post is linked on the homepage we assume it holds some truth. We will update this article when we find out more."

From the above linked blog post:

However the rumour is that someone hacked their servers and grabbed the code and several databases...And another Usenet indexer also turned up running, ahem, similar looking code.

If that is right I’m guessing a clone site will spring up soon, or maybe several...

Lesson to MPAA douchebags: Take one down, and several more will just pop up in it's place

Source: Newzbin Usenet Indexer Shuts Down After Court Defeat

Homepage: TorrentFreak

**Appzalien** · 05-18-2010, 11:19 PM

Man those guys are just begging for a boycott. I've been buying cheap movies for 3 or 4 dollars from the discount stores. They're a few years old and sometimes they're finicy, but I do my part. I'd also be willing to forgo that outlet for say 6 months or so if I thought it would do any good.
I already stopped buying music, and I don't download any either except for the occasional FTP posted ones that I want for musical purposes (slow down to learn the chord progression etc.).
Back in the 60's this would be big trouble for the media giants but todays youth are not as anti-establishment.

**WHiKWiRE** · 05-19-2010, 12:04 AM

arm the cannons fst is next.

**Cabalo** · 05-19-2010, 12:31 AM

Originally Posted by WHiKWiRE

arm the cannons fst is next.

Not really, due to our very low retention.

**darkstate01** · 05-19-2010, 12:38 AM

I can see sometime in the not to distant future, places that Index NZB's will be as common as google, These places will purely exist on a timescale of maybe a year at a time per site, But as the post says it will be a 100% clone of the site that has just disappeared.
This would totally fook with the heads of "the man" as they will be overwhelmed by Indexers everywhere, and seen as they only exist for a year at a time, the court cases would be far and few between.
Think about it, a domain name cost less that £5 per year and you have your hosting account to pay for, thats it.
so long as you tell your users what the next sites gonna be called it should be good to go.
Beware all Indexer's , you are officially in the crosshairs of big brother.

**cubbyche** · 05-19-2010, 02:09 AM

WOW Last night I was searching on it and today there gone very sad to see them go!

**SonsOfLiberty** · 05-19-2010, 05:16 AM

Wow. Slightly freaked that Newzbin has both closed AND linked to this blogpost to give an explanation. Just to say, I am nothing to do with Newzbin but I am (OK, was, it would seem) an editor and I knew the original guys fairly well via IRC.

I’ll see if I can get answers to questions asked below and post the replies in new blogposts.

As someone in comments said, there is a newzbin users group on irc.freenode.net #newzbin

And to think that was the guys "4th" blog post, he just started that blog oh, Jan 14th, not another pot until Newzbin....what luck, that guys blog will sky rocket, he better get to blogging.

**cherio** · 05-19-2010, 05:56 AM

many good alternatives still out there; NZBs.org and NzbsRus

**captive** · 05-19-2010, 06:45 AM

begining of the end of nzb, maybe. bittorrent is under constant attack was only a matter of time. didnt use my account much but i liked to have a look there now and again.