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MPA Set to Challenge Newzbin Usenet Indexer in Court

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“>.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.

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  • FunkyFresh

    Not mah newzbins! =[

  • lol

    so confused.. have never understood newzbinz…

  • Anonymous

    lol i’m sure the mpa wil FAIL miserably again, dumb fucks.

  • Anonymous

    lol i’m sure the mpa wil FAIL miserably again, dumb fu.cks

  • h33t

    the issue for the MPAA is .nzb files are manually created by the operators of the system (this differs from bittorrent where the .torrent file is manually created by users of the system). the culpability of this processing step in the distribution of content is questionable at least

    the issue for Newzbin is twofold: they are better protected if they automate their process and release the code to the global community (which cant be that difficult and should have been done a long long time ago, without a doubt the cost in the delay of automation today being the court case) and the general question of liability of metalinks as shared with torrents and google etc

    i wish them luck and godspeed with the authomation process. the MPAA is only after one thing: to increase their operating costs by exploitation of expensive legal process to the breaking point where they no longer can function

    h33t.com where it got lively when the sun came out

  • SplishSplash

    Might have to check out this Usenet…sounds intriguing!

  • cheesehead

    “have never understood newzbinz” try googling it ffs. Its really not that hard. if a techno retard like me can work it out then so can anyone

  • cheesehead

    forget nzb files. download altbinz , it has its own search engine and its just as easy as torrents but way quicker

  • andy

    since last month just using trials of three days (in that time can download anything films take about 16 minutes albums upto 2 minutes)
    then disappear into the darkness.no letters at my doorstep from mpaa

  • Dave

    Didn’t they go after Usenet.com? They’re a news provider.

    http://torrentfreak.com/the-riaa-attacks-usenet-071016/

    The hardest part to defend will be the categories. What do the management expect to be reported in TeleCine, TeleSync & Workprint sections? Other than copyrighted content. I don’t agree with the law but this is what they’ll say.

  • brandon

    Ok..so now the worst nightmare of MPAA fucktards targeting Usenet is also coming true.
    Whomsoever thougt that Usenet will remain the last resort and the final example of consumer freedom and privacy protection need to start worrying about the future.
    The two **AA fuckers are now up in arms to screw up the Usenet service and its privacy protection.Those who use Usenet understands the importance of Newsbins and its now a matter of great concerns these assholes manage to lobby and destroy the ultimate technology safeguarding human privacy and free expressions !!!
    Bunch of assholes..what a shitty 21st century we are living in !!!

  • yo

    it’s about time they focused on newsgroups. At least torrent sites dont’ charge money for pirated material.

    Why they been going after torrent sites and leaving newsgroups alone for the last 4 years is beyond me.

    Next up they should take down friggin rapidshare, megaupload, etc.. Anybody who charges money for the stuff.

  • http://www.torrentfreak.com enigmax

    You’re right Dave, i’ll add it to the post, thanks

  • Anonymous

    unfortunately taking down rapidshare and friends is a bad idea [even if they do charge money for the premium service] because alot of hard to find stuff is there

  • Anonymous

    “it’s about time they focused on newsgroups. At least torrent sites dont’ charge money for pirated material.”

    How is usenet charging money for pirated material? No one is charging money for usenet. It’s completely free. An ISP will typically charge for you to access usenet however, because it’s freaking huge and takes up a lot of resources. Usenet forums have led to google groups, etc, and google includes results from there in its contents. It’s a forum for communication.

  • http://www.10ch.org/ www.10ch.org

    It is true that the court usually follows the letter of the law, but the interpretations of the law can change over time as a result of societal perceptions. The only reason why copyright laws are interpreted to mean as they do, to mean that linking to copyrighted stuff is illegal, is the societal perception. Ultimately, the societal perception is what is most important in this fight, not Newzbin. Only ordinary people are able to change societal perception. The only way to do this is to unite. Pirates of the world, unite!

  • Piglet

    I have an idea – for every failed lawsuit, stupid letter or threat, let’s create a law would have the MPA or RIAA pay up 500,000 to the so called defendant as harrasment damages.

  • chessboxing

    First rule about usenet, don’t speak about it. Because its superior and don’t want to attract much attention to it so it will last and don’t be threatened like the torrent thing.
    I feel sorry for people who say usenet/Newzbin is difficult. It’s a surprise you can use your xp box.
    Let them sue newzbin. I don’t even use it and I basically leech usenet dry. Damn, if they can’t get rid of torrents what on earth are they going to try and do about usenet.

    @10 this assumes nzb’s are in nature illegal (the technology). So they can make money. They don’t upload content to these newsservers and don’t encourage copyright infringements. Anyway shit argument (no offense btw).

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  • h33t

    100% of young people are filesharing and it will not be long before they can all vote

    when the filesharing generation is old enough to vote we will put people into parliament and into congress and we will teach them a lesson they will regret every fukin with us

    not too long to wait dudes, use the time to prepare for government

  • Smoo monkey and Garp

    This is worse news then when I accidentally wore ladies underwear and my hair caught fire.

    Ah…memories.

  • FrK

    yeah can you stick to writing about torrents. You are attracting unwanted attention to usenet. cheers

  • bowelmover

    I guess they haven’t had enough of an arse whipping yet.

  • ploppy

    @19

    Isn’t one of the current US (or Canada or wherever) government an ex- Commodore 64 pirate? When people “grow up” and become able to afford to buy the things they want they soon forget about their pirating past. The current generation will be no different.

  • h33t

    @23

    we are talking about filesharers not pirates. filesharers are not involved in illegal activity

    so it is not about a single dude trying to forget his criminal past as a Commodore 64 pirate. it is about the majority of people remembering how they got kicked about when they were little people

    the smart politicians see what is on the horizon

  • MrC

    MPAA out to control the world for distribution of multimedia, this is all it is. The internet is for the purpose of distributing of information between parties. Like chessboxing said, don’t speak about newsgroups. If people can’t figure out other means of resources to downloading, then they don’t deserve it.

    I figured it was a matter of time before newsgroups would be sued but damn, sooner than expected. What about search engines, IRC, FTPs, AIM (and alike) and misc that allow communication to be directly established between parties? Going to shut all this down? Sorry folks but that means shutting off the internet completely. While MPAA is headed in 1 direction, that is, bringing down the internet, none of this will happen.

  • ploppy is dum

    @23, wow, that is like saying “didn’t that guy do that thing in that place sometime?” lol

  • jeffy!!!

    usenet sucks and is now outdated. I got max of my brandwich with private trackers.

  • UltraLeetJ

    “stop writing about usenet… we are so elite..” right, right. Stop b**ching ’bout it and create something superior then. Usenet… sounds like dumpster diving to me.

  • Capitain Morgan.

    They should sue one of my computer.

    ILLEGAL FUNCTION CALL.

    say the computer in response to the law suit.

  • wibble

    @5
    There is no ‘issue’ for the MPAA here, the body involved in this action is the MPA.

    Only one of the four index modes offered by newzbin is not fully automated. The one ‘manual’ index is maintained by members (called ‘editors’, but any member can become an editor, but you can’t become an editor without first being a member). “Operators” would be a term I’d reserve for salaried employees of Newzbin. These people provide and maintain the hardware, bandwidth and software for the site but do not create reports for the ‘manual’ index.

    I’m sure the open/closed source nature of the software used to run the site is irrelevant to the MPA. NZB, Newzbin’s standard file format is open, but again, not relevant.

    No NZB files are “Manually Created” by the site as you claim, the generation of NZBs is fully automated on-demand as a member requests them, tailored to the specific member’s preferences.

    An NZB contains an XML representation of article-ids and header data which refer to postings on the public usenet system. If it contains any copyright data at all, the owner of that data (as the creator of the NZB file) is Newzbin, or possibly the site member who chose what it should contain.

    @10 Newzbin merely index usenet, they make no claims to the copyright status of the content which is posted to usenet, or attempt to interpret the laws of the multiple countries that members hail from.

    As they don’t host any files for download aside from generated NZB files, their belief appears to be that the copyright status of those files on usenet is not relevant. This is much like IMDB listing movies with disregard to the copyright status of the individual movie, or Google lists websites and even delivers partial content without making any claims about copyright of the source information.

    The MPAs injunction attempt relates to Newzbin’s alleged failure to respond to index removal requests, nothing more.

    Newzbin’s lawyer wrote:
    “Essentially what is happening is that the movie companies are asserting that the provision of NZB files amounts to Newzbin aiding copyright infringement because these NZB files have not been removed when Newzbin have been alerted to their infringing nature; in fact Newzbin suspended them straight away. They seek an injunction preventing such conduct under the provision s97a of the Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1998.

    Naturally Newzbin denies this and intends to fight hard. The decision to suspend, and keep suspended, these NZBs was made on my advice.”

  • cube

    i still prefer rapidshare

  • riaatard

    OOOOOOOOOH I really must check out this usenet stuff.

    Thank you MPAA for bringing USENET distribution to my attention.

    MPAA; thank you, thank you, THANK YOU!

    Now…time to start downloading copyrighted movie files. :)

  • Rekrul

    I’ve been using Usenet newsgroups for probably 10-15 years now, even back when I had dialup. It’s only the last couple of years that I’ve tried using torrents. Getting on private torrent sites is hard for most people since you have to be invited and once you do get on, most are next to impossible to stay on because of the ratios they enforce, unless you download a ton of stuff you’re not interested in just to build up your ratios. The speed on torrents downloaded from public torrent sites sucks. I pay for Usenet credits, so last night I attempted to use a torrent to download a TV show. uTorrent estimated that it would take 5-6 hours to download 350MB. So I cancelled the torrent and downloaded it from the newsgroups in 8 minutes (6Mb connection).

    It’s true that newsgroup access often isn’t free. Many ISPs have either done away with newsgroups, or provide such crappy access to them, that the ISP provided news server is virtually useless. AT&T’s Usenet access sucked, then they got rid of all the binary groups. However, for as little as $13 a month, you can have unlimited Usenet access and download anything you want with absolutely no risk.

    As for Newzbin, I’ve never used them. There are free Usenet search sites that are completely automated and which do the same thing. They don’t have Newzbin’s categories, or human editors to sort and pick out the best NZBs, but I usually don’t have any trouble finding what I want.

  • Usenet

    Enough about usenet, take this artical down, it sucks, we hate it, it is old, out dated and offers no value.

    Ok maybe not, I just don’t want it to be mainstream. Let all the kids use torrents and keep the focus off usenet.

  • Zeriam

    Is it just me, or are the ‘stop talking about Usenet’ posts somewhat irritating?

  • Jim

    Usenet is so old and archaic, can’t we just forget about a worthless bulletin board? No one uses it anymore.

    It’s a big swarming mess of posts, spam, and more spam. You can’t find squat compared to bittorrent or rapidshare sites.

    Who ever puts stuff in rars and pars should be dragged out and shot. They’re always corrupt and a waste of time.

  • Anonymous

    yeNc

  • Gargamel

    Most Good Usenet groups are PAY TO LEECH. Good riddance to these @ssholes.

  • Anonymous

    I’ve yet to see a post or comment here that CORRECTLY explains just how NZB’s are created. Yes #5 and #30… I’m talking to you.

    It really won’t matter if they take down all the nzb indexing sites, some may find it an inconvenience, but those of us who’ve been on the net since AOL came on a floppy, will survive.

  • CCC

    good luck MPAA. unlike bittorrent , suing usenet will be much difficult.

  • mister_playboy

    There is no good reason Usenet and direct download haven’t drawn the same heat as bittorrent. If anything, both have a much greater variety of content available overall.

    I think it’s a good thing. We need as filesharers as possible to oppose these extortionists. Ultimately, we all stand or fall together.

  • DUrka

    lol @ all the anti usenet people….

  • jgf

    We need as filesharers as possible to oppose these extortionists. Ultimately, we all stand or fall together.
    Pirates of the world, unite!

  • yx

    COOL

  • Anonymous

    @ 33
    Did you even attempt to optimize the settings on utorrrent?
    I got good speeds with Usenet once-upon atime too. Now I like torrents better, I get near the same speed and more material for twenty dollars less then Usenet.

  • thumper

    This is the same mentality that led to the spread of p2p back during the Napster days. You think they got problems today with p2p?

    Let them shut down the news sharing sites and see what happens. The size of the place alone will ensure that tons of members have a hard on against the entertainment industry like they have never before experienced.

    I don’t have much sympathy for them either.

    With music, they claim it is all about piracy. No it ain’t. They selling music the problem is they are selling songs, not albums. Not as much profit per sale that way. Filler killed the album.

    Nor is piracy killing the movies. The movie houses are coming off a killer year doing better than they have ever done. For the first three months of this year, every month has been a record breaker and they are hoping for the first ever $10 billion year.

    All these court cases are over control of distribution, not about money. They have lost the control and seek to regain it.

    What they don’t seem to understand is they are bumping up against people that see nothing wrong with sharing. Those same people are the ones that spend money for both tickets to movies as well as for the album they downloaded and found they liked it and it wasn’t a turkey.

    If you read the synopsis of rental movies, everyone of them sounds like they are the next award winner. Like with filler, nothing could be further from the truth. These downloaders in what ever form are seeking to know the crap is worth buying. Killing downloading will help kill their business, not improve it.

    What they will get if successful is two fold. They will get people turning away from their product and going to games and they will get people that refuse to have anything to do with buying from them and will instead come up with new methods to share just to spite them.

    After all, how you gonna get an IP number from an external drive? Instead of swapping on line, taking a 1 TB hard drive means you can have that movie faster than you could download it and there will be no record at the ISP of whose IP was used.

  • my 2 cent car crash.

    This move is reminiscent of Hitler crossing over into Russia.

    sieg heil riaa mpaa

  • Anonymous

    IMHO these court cases have nothing to do with whether they win or not (I can not believe their lawyers or tech. people are not aware of the vagaries of the law etc, and the worldwide nature of the file-sharing.)
    I think it is all about creating a climate of fear and/or guilt.

  • Mario

    Trent Reznor: “Biggest wake-up calls of my career was when I saw a record contract. I said, ‘Wait – you sell it for $18.98 and I make 80 cents? And I have to pay you back the money you lent me to make it and then you own it?”

    http://www.reddit.com/r/WTF/comments/8aujd/trent_reznor_biggest_wakeup_calls_of_my_career/

  • Anonymous

    @23

    p2p File Sharers are different from the original pirates who were around at the beginning of The Scene. Back in those days, people were stealing for their own personal gain or for a challenge. I remember those days. It was fun, but it wasn’t really about anything. We went out and bought the products that we liked anyway (my group did anyway). Of course, when I got older and went to university, I realized that what I had done was unethical and not sustainable.

    The p2p community is comprised of idealists who use illegal p2p as an act of civil disobedience in retaliation to the injustices committed against them by the entertainment and IP industries. They will bring their beliefs to government, as they are mostly not just stealing. I suggest that you read up on the international anti-copyright movement and network neutrality. Today’s young people are idealists as opposed to the thieves in the 80s (those were good times lol).

  • NubCakes

    @45: “Did you even attempt to optimize the settings on utorrrent?
    I got good speeds with Usenet once-upon atime too. Now I like torrents better, I get near the same speed and more material for twenty dollars less then Usenet.”

    Right, you have NFI really do you… ATM Usenet binaries have 5,451,932 individual (no dupes) “releases” (according to Newzbin.com) and over 5TB is added daily. Speeds have increased not decreased and their always constant up to 25Mb/s, no uploads required and providers are now moving towards 365 days retention of files.

    @36: “Usenet is so old and archaic, can’t we just forget about a worthless bulletin board? No one uses it anymore.”

    Your an idiot, user numbers have been constantly increasing since the inception of Usenet and has growth has been increasing rapidly in the last 3-4 years. Mostly because it works – better than any p2p actually if you know how to use it.

    “It’s a big swarming mess of posts, spam, and more spam. You can’t find squat compared to bittorrent or rapidshare sites.”

    So in other word you have no idea of how to use Usenet to download files and appear to be looking through binary groups to download files in a text reader… whats th ebet you so newb your using Outlook to do this :D (hint: you see nothing but files if you know anything at all… retard). You apparently have no idea of where content is or how much is out there… 5.5 million files in one place, try finding that at any tracker, seriously…

    “Who ever puts stuff in rars and pars should be dragged out and shot. They’re always corrupt and a waste of time.”

    And apparently your also to clueless to realise that any decent binary downloader automatically repairs (if needed) and unpacks files. “Always corrupt” is a wild exaggeration although perhaps you’re doing something wrong, who knows?

    @8: “forget nzb files. download altbinz , it has its own search engine and its just as easy as torrents but way quicker”

    Dude, get a damn clue, rofl. One, altbinz is a reader/binary downloader like any other, two, so like any other reader it uses .NZB files to queue and collate post parts and three altbinz just has interfaces for various web based search engines.

    People who are whinging that Usenet is “pay to leech” are also idiotic and clueless – using the same logic your ISP is “pay to leech” you morons.

    Seriously, all P2P seems amateurish and pales into insignificance once you start using Usenet. It’s always as fast as you can download, pre-times are up there with the best private trackers, massivley more content is available and community is great as well if you wish – I doubt any other community has such a dedicated group of people that fulfil requests either.

    People, generally, once they know how to use Usenet (not at all hard these days either) never look back or get rid of it because it’s just so much better than any p2p. Sure, I still use BT, 1-click hosters and occasionally IRC and emule particuarly for “speciality” areas like mags – you can’t find EVERYTHING on Usenet – but for most content people wish to get it’s a small amount of money that provides the best way of getting files apart from scene axx.

    I encourage all curious people who are not close-minded because they feel threatened that they may not be using the “best” way to get into Usenet, you won’t regret it.

  • West

    Dutch sites/forums are, under pressure of the dutch RIAA (BREIN), removing all the .NZB links from their sites, for a few months now.

    “people don’t get infringement notices when downloading” Never knew that, thank you.

    What is next me wonders?? IRC?? :(

  • chessboxing

    A Pirate’s Life for Me. (Support Internet Piracy)
    join this at facebook, I am already, spread this. If we have a large support society, they won’t get away with secret treaties and laws passed trough the Parliament. When this group reaches 1000000 it would noticed! Spread it at every corner, sig, forum, letter…

  • wibble

    @39 NZB’s can be created in a number of ways, the few I’m aware of are:

    1) A poster can create them at the time of uploading. Newzbin does not directly allow access to these type of NZB files for download (or any other file uploaded to usenet for that matter). Some indexing sites do however rely on these, and they are of course available for download directly from usenet.

    2) An indexing site can create them automatically by regex matching subject-line patterns, poster and timeframe to determine what constitutes a unique item.

    3) Newzbin offers multiple interfaces to allow the user to create a NZB based on selections made from data which came from sanitized usenet headers. Every NZB file provided by this site is created as a direct result of a user clicking a button to CREATE the NZB file(s), just for him/her.

    Does that answer your question?

  • wibble

    Oh, one more..

    4) Easynews web interface (and probably others) allow the creation of NZB files in a similar fashion to Newzbin… a user can select individual or ranges of files based on searches and create a NZB file for download.

  • Rekrul

    #36, Jim;

    “Usenet is so old and archaic, can’t we just forget about a worthless bulletin board? No one uses it anymore.”

    Millions of people use it. Toward the end of last year, the full DVDs of The X-Files (entire series) were posted, as well as Star Trek Enterprise DVDs and other shows. One user ripped and posted his entire SciFi DVD collection, which was well over 1,000 movies from the 1950s to the present.

    Virtually every scene release is posted to the newsgroups, usually within hours of its release.

    “It’s a big swarming mess of posts, spam, and more spam. You can’t find squat compared to bittorrent or rapidshare sites.”

    It’s true there’s a lot of spam, which is why Usenet search sites are so handy.

    “Who ever puts stuff in rars and pars should be dragged out and shot. They’re always corrupt and a waste of time.”

    I’ve been downloading movies and TV shows for over two years now and in all that time, the only Rar/Par posts I couldn’t fix were ones that were so old, many of the parts had expired from the server. I knew it was a risk when I downloaded them, but wanted to take the chance. Anything less than 200 days old is no problem.

    #39, Anonymous;

    “I’ve yet to see a post or comment here that CORRECTLY explains just how NZB’s are created. Yes #5 and #30… I’m talking to you.”

    You mean the technical details, or from the user’s perspective?

    Technical – The indexing site either runs its own news server, or they have access to a premium news provider like Giganews. The site pulls the headers or “overviews”, which include the subject line of each post, the name of the poster, the newsgroup(s) they were posted to, the date, the size, and the message ID. The headers are then filtered to eliminate any posts which don’t contain a file. The information for the remaining headers is put into a database where it can be searched or browsed. When a user requests an NZB file for certain posts, the site pulls the relevant information for the posts from the database and places it into an NZB file. For each file the user has requested an NZB file for, this includes the information listed above. The NZB file also contains various other bits of XML code to make sure that the information is presented properly and can be correctly processed by the user’s client software.

    User’s perspective – The usual procedure is to use a Usenet search/indexing site. Although they differ somewhat, most work pretty much the same. You enter what you’re looking for into the search box and it will display any matches it finds. Alternately, most sites will let you manually browse the contents of newsgroups. Regardless of which method you use, once you see something you want, you put a check in the box to the left of it, then click the button to generate/download/create an NZB file. The site creates it and sends it to you, where it is saved on your system.

    #45, Anonymous;

    “Did you even attempt to optimize the settings on utorrrent?”

    Yes, but there’s not much you can do if there are 900 seeds and 5000+ peers. Or if you’re trying to download something over 6 months old with 2 seeds and 3 peers.

    “I got good speeds with Usenet once-upon atime too. Now I like torrents better, I get near the same speed and more material for twenty dollars less then Usenet.”

    I always get good speeds with Usenet and I almost always get lousy speeds with torrents on public trackers.

  • usenet user

    if you want to use the usenet for free you need to find out if your ISP grants you access. If it does, download GrabIt and type in the usenet server. I live in the UK and my ISP is BT. So if you also have BT here’s all you need to do:
    >download GrabIt
    >enter ‘news.btinternet.com’ as your news server.

  • Pingback: » MPA Set to Challenge Newzbin Usenet Indexer in Court » Haber 7 x 24 News Son Dakika Haberler

  • Tyler

    first rule

  • TheresADuckOnMyDesk

    @ 57

    You use your own ISP’s usenet server to download copyrighted material? The same ISP who knows your address? Are you mad? Its child’s play for them to see what you’re downloading, and they know exactly where to direct the police should the notion take them.

    On top of it all, its BT who don’t exactly have a good track record for not shafting its customers.

    There’s a reason why I pay for newsgroup access from a provider who offers SSL connections and does not keep any logs. The price they ask monthly is a small amount to pay for peace of mind coupled with speeds that max out my connection.

  • Anonymous

    @54 – I didn’t have a question, and if you’d read it the way I wrote it, you’d have realized that I’ve been on Usenet since AOL came on a floppy, which predates the creation of nzb’s.

  • wibble

    @60 That wasn’t a question? it must have been a snide complaint then.

    Feel free to correct my description of the process Newzbin uses to make NZBs if you feel you know more about the subject.

    Also, I fail to see what relevance your tenure of usenet has on an article about Newzbin, especially as to how far it extends prior to the creation of NZBs. Surely your wonderous knowledge of NZBs can only have come about *since* Caesium invented them in 2003?

  • SteveO

    Sheesh, if they could stop all this torrents and biz they could really raise their prices. Look, Itunes already raised theirs. Once they stop this, they will raise prices thru the roof.

  • jolle

    Ever wonder how the MPA always goes searching for a skapegoat, like, they think there’s some kind of mafia pirate godfather they have to arrest and all the piracy in this world would stop forever lol…but they can’t arrest people for giving away shit. Make a movie that is fucking touching,memorable and inspiring and I will go to a cinema and pay my respects loyally,give me a shitty movie and I will rape it,and throw it away like a the crack whore it is

  • JaM3z

    What can they do to newzbin that they havnt tried to do with mininova? I mean honestly how fucking retarded are these people.

    I use usenet all the time for downloading because for 7.50EUR a month i can have unlimited downloads at my maximum line speed with 256-bit SSL encryption.

    Besides there are litterally hundreds of usenet indexers now and most of them are increasing capacity to 365days to follow giganews added retention.

    If you want an easy usenet client just use Alt.binz 1 click download and extract to whatever folder you choose, without downloading tons of headers.

  • bawbnug

    @ 57 & 59

    The BT newsgroup service is outsourced and provided by giganews. I believe it has a speed cap and a monthly data cap too.

  • newsbinner

    Why is everyone talking about grabit?

    Use a free, nagware free news reader like pan or binary news reaper if you want to use usenet.

    I also recommend donating to nzbmatrix for the extra features that you get. Its a great site, much like a torrent site, with ratings, proper pruning of fakes, comments, and a large vault of nzbs.

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  • MaxPayne880

    The first rule of Usenet: Don’t talk about Usenet.

  • BTGuard - BitTorrent Anonymously

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