[CATWILDUK]

MPA Set to Challenge Newzbin Usenet Indexer in Court
Written by enigmax on April 07, 2009
The big brother of the MPAA has Newzbin, the world’s most prominent newsgroup indexer, firmly in its sights. Newzbin, which indexes Usenet and offers its members NZB files, is being sued by the MPA, the global lobby group for the movie industry. The pair are set to fight it out in court, possibly before the end of the year.

While most media attention is focused on the mighty BitTorrent, availability of just about every type of copyrighted digital media continues unabated on Usenet, otherwise known as ‘the newsgroups’. Downloads from Usenet are fast – very fast – with most transfers maxing out the user’s Internet connection. Add to this the excellent security offered by Usenet (people don’t get infringement notices when downloading) and Usenet can prove very attractive, even to the hardened BitTorrent user.

Like most things, however, Usenet has its drawbacks. The main problem lies with its complexity – the learning curve can be a little steep – but with amazing little things called .NZB files, downloading is made almost as easy as BitTorrent. NZB files contain meta-data and without splitting too many hairs, they function in a very similar way to .torrent files. Download an NZB, load it into a news client such as Grabit and very quickly the download is complete.

Newzbin is one of the original Usenet indexing sites and the creator of the .NZB format, which opened Usenet downloading to the masses. In May 2008 it received a threatening letter from the Motion Picture Association (MPA). In the letter, the MPA claimed that some of Newzbin’s editors were listing NZBs which linked to movies on Usenet which infringed their member’s copyright.

In October 2008, ‘Caesium’, the owner of Newzbin made an announcement. “Newzbin has recently received two serious complaints regarding the indexing we perform, and raising doubts as to its legality. It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights.”

Noting that Newzbin would defend itself vigorously against the complainants, Caesium said he believed that linking to content on Usenet is entirely legal and that the site’s procedures for dealing with unlawful content is appropriate. “We believe that, or we wouldn’t still be here,” he added.

At the start of December 2008, Newzbin confirmed that it had indeed been removing NZB files that link to infringing movies on Usenet. However, this wasn’t enough for the MPA, who filed an injunction against Newzbin.

Now, four months later, the site is still operating as normal but has received more details about its upcoming battle with the movie companies.

“The latest we’ve heard is that there will be an interim hearing (to hash out administrative details) sometime in the next couple of months, and the case itself will be heard in court sometime between November 2009 and January 2010,” said Caesium in an announcement.

It is far from clear how the legal system will view the operations at Newzbin – no other site of its type has ever appeared in court in the UK, or elsewhere in the world. Newzbin has already been considering that in order to be completely sure of staying within the law it may have to automate its operations and remove human intervention in the creation of its NZB files.

While Newzbin has never, ever hosted any copyright infringing material, previously another newsgroup-related company Usenet.com was sued by the RIAA for actually hosting illicit content. Usenet.com was also criticized over its advertising, which is alleged to encourage piracy.

[CATWILDUK]

Anti-Piracy Group Takes Out Usenet Indexer

Anti-piracy group BREIN is well known in the BitTorrent community, having already managed to shut down hundreds of small sites. The Dutch outfit is currently being sued by a group of Usenet enthusiasts after it called their site illegal. Undeterred, it’s now flexing its muscles to get NZB sites closed down too.

Funded by the movie, music and gaming industries, BREIN has been a thorn in the side of BitTorrent sites for years. More recently the outfit extended their activities to target sites frequented by Usenet users. They labeled the Usenet community FTD as criminals, and are currently being sued for doing so.

On TorrentFreak we’ve also had issues with BREIN after they labeled us a ‘pirate weblog’ and then used material from our site without proper attribution. Our legal counsel had to jump in, in an attempt to stop their libelous writing and harassment of smaller website operators.

As expected, this didn’t have much effect, and BREIN continued their operations claiming a few dozen victories by shutting down smaller torrent communities. They usually operate by sending emails to the site’s admins or hosting providers claiming that their activities are illegal, ordering them to shut down or face legal action.

Besides torrent sites, BREIN is also targeting Usenet indexers, claiming that they assist in copyright infringement. The NZB files found on many of these sites can be considered as Usenet’s answer to .torrent files as they point to content hosted elsewhere. They also make the otherwise-complicated Usenet downloading process relatively easy to master. BREIN does not like the fact that NZBs bring Usenet to the mainstream and considers sites hosting those files to have the same function as torrent sites and is targeting them in much the same way.

One of the NZB sites threatened by BREIN is BNI-online. The site received an ultimatum, with BREIN ordering them to stop their ‘illegal’ activities within 48 hours or be taken to court. The site has responded to this request and ceased its operations.

Splendid, the site’s founder explains that BREIN’s threats are one of the reasons for closing down the site. At this point we can not confirm that any other sites have closed after similar threats, but it wouldn’t be a surprise. Every torrent or NZB site hosted in The Netherlands will be approached by the anti-piracy outfit sooner or later.

This week, BREIN will be in court with another Dutch based site, Mininova, and TorrentFreak will of course keep you updated on the outcome and progress in this trial.

[CATWILDUK]

BREIN Demands $70,000 Per Day Penalty For Usenet Community

Earlier this year, anti-piracy outfit BREIN demanded the closure of Usenet community FTD. After negotiations between the pair came to nothing, BREIN declared FTD a criminal operation prompting FTD to take legal action against BREIN to clear their name. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD, demanding $70,000 a day in penalties.

Founded in 2001, FTD is the largest Usenet community in The Netherlands with around 450,000 members. FTD and its software allows members to report material they find on Usenet along with its location. This material could include movies, music and TV shows and this made it a target for notorious anti-piracy outfit BREIN.

BREIN says that FTD operates illegally but the Usenet community and its specialist IT lawyer, Arnoud Engelfriet of Ictrecht law firm vigorously deny this and are now taking legal action the Dutch anti-piracy outfit. The background to the case can be found in our earlier article, and a more detailed report on the action against BREIN here.

Yesterday, while BREIN’s site was still supposedly out of action following an alleged (or Hoaxed) DDoS attack from Pirate Bay fans, it published a further report about FTD, which was hidden on its site away from easy public viewing. Strangely the same page at the time of writing is password protected and the report unavailable, but we have a copy and translation.

Entitled ‘BREIN Demands Closure of FTD’, the anti-piracy outfit went on to say that if FTD does not close it will require a penalty of 50,000 euros ($70,000) per day against the service, in addition to compensation and full reimbursement of costs. BREIN said that FTD “organizes and promotes” Usenet content, most of which is illegal.

BREIN then refers to earlier discussions it had with FTD, noting that it asked FTD to cease its “structural use of illegal content” in early 2009. The two sides had entered discussions to see if they could iron out their difficulties. Following on, FTD pro-actively modified how they operate to ensure that there could be no doubt as to their legality.

“After we made the changes, we got complete radio silence from BREIN. No confirmation, no rejection, nothing,” Arnoud explained. “Only after several days we found out what BREIN thought – but only by reading the online news. That was a huge disappointment.”

The news saw BREIN declare that FTD was a criminal operation in an article titled “You do not pay for it, it’s unlawful” and this led to FTD taking legal action against BREIN to try to clear their name by having their operation declared legal by a court. Now BREIN is counter-claiming against FTD.

Tim Kuik from BREIN now says that it is clear that FTD “continued their abuses unabated” and that the modifications they made were only made to hide the “true nature” of the site.

“It is a wolf in sheep’s clothing,” said Kuik. “FTD earn money with a system that exists by virtue of the huge supply of illegal content to Usenet.” Mirroring the disappointment felt at FTD, Kuik added: “It is disappointing but illustrates that BREIN’s outstretched hand has been cut off.”

So what exactly does this claim for 50,000 euros per day mean for FTD? Lawyer Arnoud Engelfriet told TorrentFreak that BREIN did not ask the court for damages. Legally they are barred from asking for damages – article 3:305a of the Dutch Civil Code says that an organization that represents the interests of a certain group can never ask for damages. They asked instead for a penal sum of 50k euros if FTD were ordered by the court to shut down but it refused.

“The idea is that a court can order you to shut down but you can ignore the court,” said Arnoud. “With the penal sum, you risk that the court will then sell your house or seize other assets. In principle that’s legal, but the amount is of course ridiculous.”

“Ridiculous also sums up my view of the BREIN counterclaim. Instead of addressing any of the points we raised, they simply repeat their standard rhetoric. Nowhere is the distinction made between uploading works and telling people that someone has uploaded a work for (legal) download. And downloading illegal uploads is legal in the Netherlands,” notes Arnoud.

“BREIN is not known for its careful handling of the truth,” he added. “They are a propaganda organization after all.”

[CATWILDUK]

"Newzbin has recently received two serious complaints regarding the indexing we perform, and raising doubts as to its legality.

It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights. We will be defending ourselves vigorously against both the complainants if necessary and we believe a court will agree with our view that linking to content on Usenet is indeed legal and our method of dealing with unlawful content is appropriate. We believe that, or we wouldn't still be here.

We are not in a position to disclose the identities of these two complainants (though I'm sure you can guess one of them) but we will report more as we can.

These cases are against us, not you. Having an account on Newzbin is not going to be a problem for you.

So, basically, if you start seeing press releases that legal action is commencing against us, don't be alarmed - we know, and indeed it's a good thing that we're getting these issues laid to rest.

Remember these things take time however, so it's unlikely we'll have further news for another few weeks - please don't hassle us for information, we will give you it when we have it.

(Comments are closed: Sorry, but this isn't an invitation for a discussion on the merits of what we do, what we should be doing, or general hysteria around the matter. We have better things to be doing than moderating hysterical comments right now.)"

[CATWILDUK]

Newzbin

Latest Site News
law @ 29-01-2010 13:35 GMT

Litigation in 3.2.1...
Our long awaited case, 20th Century Fox & Others v Newzbin, begins next week in London. It should last about a week. It's unknown yet when any verdict will be handed down after the case is concluded.

We will try to provide updates at the end of each day as the case progresses, but we may be busy.

Wish us luck!

Newzbin Legal