Newzbin Resurrection: Interview With The Mysterious Mr White
As the Newzbin resurrection saga continues, the boss of Team R Dogs has been answering a whole range of questions about the site’s return. More than $40,000 has been invested in the project so far, a coder hired and they aren’t scared of the MPA either. “We’ll just do a Pirate Bay on them,” they say. “We can run faster than them and shapeshift.”
Last week a group calling themselves Team R Dogs contacted ex-members of Newzbin with a message claiming that they would soon bring back the site.
That news was quickly followed by the revelation from an ex-director of Newzbin that the site’s domain names had been sold to a Seychelles-based company in order to clear debts. A couple of days ago the company, WCIS Limited, told TorrentFreak they did not wish to tell us about their intentions for the domains.
Run by an ex-Newzbin editor, the DeepSharer blog has now managed to secure an interview with Team R Dogs boss Mr White. Here are the main points, plus those from the later Q & A.
After reiterating that they are nothing to do with the original Newzbin staff, Mr White said that since they already had the Newzbin code, bringing the site back after their legal problems was just the opportune thing to do.
At least to begin, the site will be a “straight clone” of the old site, but a redesign is on the agenda. This process could carried out with the help of users who could be asked to vote on the inclusion of new features. There is even talk of adding non-Usenet search features such as BitTorrent and Rapidshare. And the porn will return on Newzxxx too.
As for retention, the aim is to reach at least 400 days as soon as possible and then move to 600+ days within 9 months from launch.
So will ex-users of Newzbin return to the site? Team R Dogs certainly hope so as they say the whole thing is costing a fortune and quite frankly, they need the money.
“I have personally signed cheques for an $22,000 Sun server and 2 x $9,000 Sun servers to help run this site and I expect to sign more. I have hired a fulltime coder on good salary, I am recruiting another expensive geek to keep the site up,” explains Mr White.
Although the site will probably launch for free for a week or two, the site will revert to a pay venue.
“Let me be clear. We have a profit motive in this. We haven’t tried to ‘steal’ from Newzbin1 guys – they got shutdown by the MPA, not by us. The MPA have given us an opportunity to make money. Thanks MPA,” he continues.
“Does this mean we intend to shit on users & ex-Newzbin1 members? Fuck no. We want to provide a good service and take the same profits the Newzbin1 guys did. Yea sure we are using their works to do so but they have abandoned their works and they have SAID so themselves. There is no moral ambiguity here: they have dropped out of the scene and we are replacing them.”
Part of the support for ex-members will be the continuation of any credit they had on the site, although how far back that will go will remain to be seen. For those adding new credit, a 3rd party payment system will be used.
But let’s not forget about the fate of Newzbin at the hands of the MPA – how will Team R Dogs fend off that inevitable attack?
“We’ll just do a Piratebay on them,” they say. “We can run faster than them and shapeshift.”
