[Update] Newzbin, Court orders blocking of Newzbin2 site by BT

[Damien]

Those who use indexing services for Newsgroups may be interested in what has been a developing story over the last few months, coming to a head a few days ago where the MPA has started court proceedings against Newzbin for the indexing they perform.

Newsbin have been removing TV shows for which they received complaints to try and keep the lawsuit at bay and apparnetly that has been unsuccessful and they are now in the process of court proceedings.

Unlike a lot of other sites facing these kind of proceedings, this will be a English matter as the site is based here. So it would be interesting to see how this plays out.

Anyone have any idea how this will play out in a English court?

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by Damien

Newsbin have been removing TV shows for which they received complaints to try and keep the lawsuit at bay and apparnetly that has been unsuccessful and they are now in the process of court proceedings.

I presume in this paragraph you also mean newZbin and not newSbin which is a usenet download tool

[punky]

There is no case to answer. Newzbin does not contain any pirated material. Sites like VCDQuality and IRCSpy sucessfully fought this action Stateside.

Hopefully they will fight, win, and not have to bend their indexing will to anyone in the future.

They are fighting the case.This week though they have removed quite a few TV shows after being requested.

I suggested to them that they should remove the NZB and instead catalogue the posts just by file name. Then the user could use a raw search of the file name either on Newzbin or somewhere like Binsearch. This will be a test case if Newzbin loses then a lot of sites will be closing which will be a shame

[peanut]

Originally Posted by punky

There is no case to answer. Newzbin does not contain any pirated material. Sites like VCDQuality and IRCSpy sucessfully fought this action Stateside.

Hopefully they will fight, win, and not have to bend their indexing will to anyone in the future.

Logically (without any legal knowledge) that's how I see it too. I hope they don't get made an example which is what I think they are trying to do. Be a sad day if they do get done.

[Gary L]

at the end of the day, or they are doing is indexing what's on usenet.
the facts are that they hold none of the files, and are not distributing anything.

A court of law would have to see it for what it is, and that is that they are only listing what's available. to be able to get a prosecution, I would think that they would have to be seen to be more involved and actually storing and distributing.

The thing is Newszbin is not that careful they do index cracks and keygens this they will struggle to explain away in court. Indexing complete content is fine but indexing cracks could well be a different manner. Another NZB site I use more than newzbin does not allow any requests or posting of cracks or keygens or seriels

[punky]

Hopefully though the issue won't come up as its the Motion Picture Association, so it will centre on films and TV shows.

Strictly speaking though, they don't host cracks or serials, only links to them, so it should be the same isue as linking to TV shows and movies. They do stream nfo files but they actively block out serial numbers which is something they can point out in court.

Another is that they do index everything, not just pirated material.

[Damien]

How has that defence worked for the Pirate Bay though (aside from the fact they are hosted outside of the problems)? I am responsibly convinced that if they can prove that Newzbin intends to aid the distribution of pirated material then the MPA could win what would be a civil case.

The indexing is not the same as, say, Google. Newzbin used editors which would mean they are fully aware of what content they are allowing access too and in fact deliberately allow the content.

if the worst comes to the worst raw searches are available as are header downloads. Index sites do make life easy though

[Damien]

Originally Posted by zinglebarb

if the worst comes to the worst raw searches are available as are header downloads. Index sites do make life easy though

They might just be trying to may Newzbin close due to the cost and effort in defending themselves

Possibly but Newzbins brief is actually a user on the site so maybe its pro bono lol . I did do a whois and newzbin are actually based on a UK server. I know they are UK based but the server is UK also so maybe its an attempt at getting something done over here? My other favorite site is UK based but hosted in the US

[sk8er_boi6000]

Originally Posted by Damien

How has that defence worked for the Pirate Bay though (aside from the fact they are hosted outside of the problems)? I am responsibly convinced that if they can prove that Newzbin intends to aid the distribution of pirated material then the MPA could win what would be a civil case.

The indexing is not the same as, say, Google. Newzbin used editors which would mean they are fully aware of what content they are allowing access too and in fact deliberately allow the content.

The reason that defense doesn't work for TPB is because of their openly arrogant (albeit very funny) stance to refuse to take anything down, when pointed out by owners of its copyright.

The problem is that although the offending site itself doesn't host any illegal content, the owners knowingly allow its use in the aiding and abetting of the distribution of copyrighted content, and are therefore still liable for any damage caused, at least under UK and US law... because the law is different in Sweden, TPB continue to get away with their actions.

Google index the net with bots which index a hell of a lot more than a bunch of us humans.

[sk8er_boi6000]

Yes, but Google do not intentionally help the spread of illegal content, and they cooperate with legal enforcement agencies.