High Court rules against Newzbin
Newzbin's Usenet gateway service - which provides a way to search for files, including copyright content - has been found to infringe copyright.
In the ruling, Newzbin Ltd - a UK-based company which provides links to files held on Usenet servers, enabling its customers to easily find and download copyright and public domain content - was found to be engaging in copyright infringement, despite not actually hosting any files itself. Although the details of the court order have not yet been made public, it is believed that the court will order Newzbin to cease its operations until such time as it can reasonably guarantee that copyright material is not made available through its service without rights holders' permissions.
The ruling was welcomed with open arms by UK rights group the Motion Picture Association, with general counsel Ted Shapiro stating that Newzbin represented "a source of immense damage to the creative sector in the UK and worldwide," and claiming that the ruling "sends a clear message that websites focusing on providing viewers with pirated films and TV programmes infringe copyright and are liable for their actions even where those websites don't themselves host the content."
The move comes as file sharers come under increased scrutiny ahead of the proposed Digital Economy Bill, which seeks to introduce punishments including disconnection from the Internet for those who stand accused of participating in the illicit trade of copyright content online.
Although considered a victory for rights holders such as the MPA and the companies it represents, the court's ruling will come as a blow to those who used Newzbin's services and could very well spell the end of the company's operations in the UK.
Do you believe that services such as Newzbin should be held accountable for the actions of their users, or are they blameless as they don't host the files in question themselves? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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13 Comments
Discuss in the forums Replyits all the categorizes as well that went against them as well, and the idea of Rapidhsare redirecting to legal sites and there thinking that if they fail 3 times they are going to pay for it is not likely
Personally I think it's ridicules. Where do you draw the line with it? Do you start prosecuting search engines like Google for pointing the way to the torrent sites? If I was Newzbin I would appeal.
Still rubbish though, I use Newzbin, A LOT, and I'd hate to see it go down the pooper.
For some insane reason their legal council advised them to play ignorant to the common usage of Newzbin and instead defend it as a 'text article reader' and 'home movies indexer'. Nobody wins a case by playing dumb to a Judge, I imagine it just pisses him off instead.
Definitely a case of TL;DR! ;) I will read the judgement, but currently waiting for a knock on the door from Dominos..... :p
Although I have just read a Register article on the subject (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/03/31/newzbin_ruling/)... The company said it had "notice and takedown" policy, but the judge decided that it was most certainly not being utilised. As other posters have pointed out, the company used editors to classify content; the instructions given to editors also appeared to encourage the proper and consistent classification of copyrighted material, because that was the number 1 reason that people use the site.
If you are actively assisting an illegal action then what you are doing is essentially illegal - isn't that incitement to commit an offence or assisting an offender? If I was to post on Facebook that my next door neighbour was going on holiday for 2 weeks and my neighbours and I are all out at work during the day and my neighbour that's on holiday gets burgled am I not doing the same thing? I have actually pointed out exactly where and when to burgle my neighbours house and have made it easier for a crime to be committed for those individuals that want to commit a burglary. Downloading software is illegal, it is theft and the sooner we stop it, the sooner games prices will drop and DRM will become less restrictive.
As for peoples comments about being able to do the same thing with Google. Good Luck to you in:
a) you find what you're actually looking for and
b) getting rid of the trojan/key-logger whatever that's in the file you've downloaded.
Try going to these sites and see what happens with your firewall/anti-virus software. But then I guess that kind of serves you right.
Unfortunately the good of P2P and usenet et al are undermined by a criminal underbody. How many good ideas ( I said ideas, not services) have we lost this way? Kazaa, eDonkey etc that COULD HAVE been a great way of distributing Demos, Legitimate Software etc due to their relative ease of use.
I think newzbit have been treated quite fairly they have been given an opportunity to cease and desist.
You definitely have a point there. I wonder if their lawyer pointed that one out :p