Although BT had already lost their case opposing the action, there was a last-minute development when a Newzbin2 and BT user stepped up to intervene in the proceedings.

The individual, known only as “DM”, had already come under pressure from the MPA who, according to Newzbin2′s Mr White, had sent him a bill for “$10,000 in costs” along with a warning that the proceedings could bankrupt him.

Despite these efforts, DM’s application was heard yesterday. TorrentFreak understands that he asked that the full block on Newzbin2 should be avoided, and the MPA should specifically identify which URLs point to infringing material and have those removed instead.

“Congratulations to our user ‘DM’ for having the big clanging balls of steel to intervene on behalf of the users of Newzbin2. He did so in the teeth of desperate ferocious opposition by the MPA and wasn’t fazed by their spineless attempts at personal intimidation,” said Newzbin2′s Mr White in an email to TorrentFreak.

“The MPA were happy to line up their own lackey Copyright Dinosaurs organizations to support their the claim: the BPI, IFPI, Publishers Association and the Association for UK Interactive Entertainment lined up sycophantically and obediently behind the MPA. The MPA hypocrites didn’t feel that it was appropriate for anyone opposing their wishes to be heard.”

Nevertheless, the judge felt that DM’s submission should be aired and he allowed that to go ahead. Whether it has made any difference is yet to be seen.

“The court case concluded but the judge has ‘reserved judgment’ which I’m told means he will deliver his blocking order in an unknown form in a few weeks or so,” says Mr White. “Obviously we are nervous on behalf of our UK users and hope for the best.”

But for ‘DM’ the news on his predicted bankruptcy appears to be good. Because he won his submission he won’t have to pay the costs of the MPA opposing him.

“Of course, £7,500 wouldn’t be enough to buy the MPA any politicians so they probably aren’t that upset. Shame,” Mr White concludes.

Source: High Court “Reserves Judgment” at Newzbin2 Blocking Hearing

The case was brought against BT by Twentieth Century Fox and five other major Hollywood film studios who had demanded that Newzbin2 should be stopped from providing links to unauthorized content.

Justice Arnold stated that BT had “actual knowledge” that people using its service were infringing copyright, and that users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe the copyrights of the studios.

Today, BT and the MPA are back in court to work out the final stage of this precedent-setting web-blocking case, but there will be a surprise last-minute addition to the proceedings. Following an earlier appeal from Newzbin2, a BT user has stepped forward and is bravely preparing to take on the MPA.

Speaking with TorrentFreak, Mr White of TeamRDogs, the team behind Newzbin2, has confirmed that the individual has intervened in the case with an aim to prevent the site being blocked. His application will be heard today along with the blocking order.

“Already the MPA are trying to intimidate him by sending him a bill for $10,000 in costs,” Mr White told us. “They are trying to intimidate him by telling him he will be bankrupted if he loses!”

“We think that it’s typical of the MPA to say ‘noone from the site objected’ and then try to bury them in huge legal bills when they do,” he added. “We are providing him with moral support and we will be trying to encourage people to chip in for his legal costs if he loses, and we will help him out too.”

TorrentFreak has learned that the individual, who is both a user of Newzbin2 and BT, is attempting to intervene to prevent a full block of the site and make the MPA specifically identify which URLs should be blacklisted instead.

It is felt that both BT and the MPA have failed to correctly inform the court of the legal content to be found on Usenet and as such is under the impression none exists. Selective URL blacklisting will allow the legal content to continue as usual.

The ruling against Newzbin2 marks the first time that a site in the UK has been ordered to be blocked on copyright infringement grounds. More on this today when news from the hearing breaks.

Source: Newzbin2 User “Bullied” By Hollywood After High Court Blocking Challenge

The Motion Picture Association wanted an injunction ordering BT to block its subscribers from accessing Newzbin2, a site it claims causes the industry significant losses due to unlawful movie downloading.

Today a High Court judge ruled in the MPA’s favor and ordered BT to block Newzbin2.

“In my judgment it follows that BT has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe copyright: it knows that the users and operators of Newzbin2 infringe copyright on a large scale, and in particular infringe the copyrights of the Studios in large numbers of their films and television programmes,” said Justice Arnold in his ruling.

“It knows that the users of Newzbin2 include BT subscribers, and it knows those users use its service to receive infringing copies of copyright works made available to them by Newzbin2.”

Despite earlier an statement which indicated that Newzbin2′s owners would hire lawyers to fight attempts to have them blocked in the UK, the site has not been represented during the hearings.

BT described the judgment as “helpful” since it provides clarity on a “complex issue”.

“It clearly shows that rights holders need to prove their claims and convince a judge to make a court order. BT has consistently said that rights holders need to take this route. We will return to court after the summer to explain what kind of order we believe is appropriate,” the ISP said in a statement.

Newzbin2 carries no illicit content of its own, but provides so-called “structural access” to content uploaded by others to the worldwide newsgroup (Usenet) system. Features offered by the members-only subscription site include a raw search, which is very similar to any other Internet search engine and is entirely legal.

The thorn in the MPA’s side, however, is the site’s supply of NZBs. These are torrent-like files which often link to named illicit content. These NZBs, which make otherwise complicated Usenet downloading a breeze, are organized by Newzbin2′s editors into categories such as CAM, Screener, Telesync, R5 and Workprint, titles which leave little to the imagination when it comes to considering the legitimacy of their sources.

Both MPA and BT will be back in court during October to decide on the practicalities of carrying out the injunction.

Now that the MPA has been successful in this website-blocking bid, there are concerns that this phenomenon will spread to other targets. Initially other ISPs in the UK will be expected to follow suit and block Newzbin2 too, a development confirmed by the MPA this morning.

Update: The admins of Newzbin2 have published their official response to the news – read here.

Source: Hollywood Forces UK ISP To Block Newzbin Usenet Site

The celebrations following the site’s demise were to be short-lived. Newzbin was quickly resurrected under new management as Newzbin2, and the MPA faced the prospect of taking on new legal action against the site’s new owners. Rather than tackle Newzbin2 head on, Hollywood tried a different approach.

During September 2010, TorrentFreak learned that the MPA were developing plans to take leading UK ISP BT to court and by December we had solid proof that was indeed the case. The MPA went to court seeking an injunction against BT in order to force them to block Newzbin2.

“In launching this case, the MPA is aiming to secure an order that will enable BT to block Internet access to the site, thus preventing the site from using the Internet to make money through infringement,” the MPA informed us in a statement.

This week the MPA are back at the High Court again, hoping it can get an injunction to force BT to block the site for its 5.6 million subscribers. According to an MPA spokesperson, BT was selected for two reasons.

“BT was chosen because it’s the largest [ISP] and already has the technology in place, through its Cleanfeed system, to block the site,” she said.

Developed by BT at an estimated cost of £500,000, Cleanfeed is a content blocking system that has been operational since 2004. In conjunction with information supplied by the Internet Watch Foundation, it is used by BT to block child pornography sites.

Traffic destined for a blacklisted URL or IP address is intercepted by Cleanfeed. At this point BT impersonates the destination web server and returns an HTTP 404 status code, causing a subscriber’s web browser to show a site “not found” message.

It is unclear how much development work has been done on the system since its inception, but early versions of Cleanfeed had a number of limitations. The product only worked on the standard port for regular browsing, port 80. It was also unable to block encrypted or proxied web traffic, unless the proxy itself was on the blacklist.

Interestingly, according to comments made in 2004 by Mike Galvin, then Director of Internet Services for BT Retail, the company already had concerns that outsiders would attempt to widen the purpose of Cleanfeed. Another ISP, Wanadoo, was apparently approached by the BPI to use a system similar to Cleanfeed to block music piracy.

In response, Galvin said that if the pressure to “extend the scope” of Cleanfeed became too great, BT would cancel the project. BT has made no recent public comment to that effect in connection with this current action by the MPA.

“The MPA application to engage in censorship of the Internet for their own petty interests would, if granted, set a dangerous precedent in a Western democracy,” Newzbin told TorrentFreak in an earlier statement.

“‘Drive-by’ litigation such as this will cut off access to substantial legitimate content and is entirely unwarranted & disproportionate.”

Newzbin have already taken steps to mitigate any site blocking measures by using the TOR anonymity system.

“The MPA’s lame attempt at censoring us in the UK won’t be permitted to cut Brits off from us if it happens,” concludes Newzbin’s Mr White.

Source: Hollywood Force ISP To Use Child Abuse Filter Against File-Sharing Site

Having lost its legal battle with the MPA in March 2010, in May it collapsed under a mountain of debt, only to resurrected under new management as Newzbin2.

The site has gone about its business ever since, continuing in pretty much the same manner as it did before the closure and indexing the same content – including Hollywood movies. One would think, therefore, that in common with dozens of torrent sites, file-hosting services and even search engines like Google, Newzbin2 would be overwhelmed with DMCA takedown requests. Not so, says Mr White of Team R Dogs, the group behind the site.

“Oddly we seem to get very few DMCA notices and when we contact the sender we are ignored. I’ve sent any number of email replies to email addresses which state ‘we monitor this email account’ only to receive no reply,” Mr White told TorrentFreak. “Why, it’s almost as if they are just sending them without caring if anything is done.”

Since the DMCA takedown notice is one of the most powerful weapons for removing content, or in the case of Newzbin2 mere links to content on the Internet, it’s strange that the site doesn’t get many. Even more so when the site, in Usenet terms, is Hollywood enemy #1. So are the MPA interested at all?

“We’ve had /one/ DMCA notice since December & even that wasn’t from the Hollywood Dirty Half Dozen but a software maker,” Mr White explained. “We emailed them and they totally blanked us. We’d be perfectly happy to take it down if they’d identified the posts.”

Of course, while DMCA notices can be a useful tool, they’re by no means the only one available to use against file-sharing sites. Currently the MPA are locking horns with ISP BT in the UK in an attempt to have Newzbin2 blocked there.

“The MPA’s lame attempt at censoring us in the UK won’t be permitted to cut Brits off from us if it happens,” insists Mr White.

However, with the recent domain seizures in the US ringing in everyone’s ears – not least the operators of Newzbin2 – there may be a more direct way of reducing traffic to the site on a worldwide basis, but Team R Dogs don’t appear too concerned.

“We are making sure that the site is going to be around for the long haul. Given the shenanigans of the US government, with its unlawful domain seizure project, we may need to change domains to non-US ones: we have solutions for that in place, with backup domains,” Mr White assured us.

With the future in mind, Mr White told TorrentFreak that there are plans to upgrade the site to make it more reliable and improve coverage of Usenet content.

“While we have backup servers and databases in several global locations we plan to migrate systems to fully distributed & redundant global databases & webservers so that any one server going AWOL won’t bring the site down, or even need backups to be brought manually online.”

Source: Hollywood Usenet Enemy #1 Never Gets DMCA Takedown Notices

The first tip said that the movie industry would try to force UK ISPs to block Newzbin in the UK. The second was more specific – that target would be one of the leading ISPs, BT.

After trying to gather more information, we contacted the MPA with what we knew and asked them if they could confirm our suspicions. At that stage, no information was forthcoming and Newzbin were also in the dark. The trail ran cold but in the last 24 hours the picture clarified somewhat.

Yesterday, the MPA went to court seeking an injunction against BT in order to force them to block Newzbin2, the resurrected version of the original Newzbin which lost a High Court battle earlier in the year.

In a statement sent to TorrentFreak, the MPA explain the process it has undertaken.

“The law which the Court referred to is Section 97A of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, which provides for possible injunctions against internet intermediaries. Article 8.3 of the European Union’s Copyright Directive, of which S97A is the UK implementation, has been used successfully in Denmark to block rogue sites hosting illegal material, with further cases pending in Germany, Holland and Belgium.”

“In launching this case, the MPA is aiming to secure an order that will enable BT to block Internet access to the site, thus preventing the site from using the Internet to make money through infringement,” the MPA adds.

In order for the MPA to obtain an injunction under section 97A it is believed that they must have approached BT already with a request to block Newzbin, but had it denied.

At this stage, BT have confirmed they have received paperwork but refused to comment further.

John McVay, Chief Executive of Producers Alliance for Cinema and Television (PACT), a UK trade association representing and promoting the commercial interests of independent films and television, welcomed the news.

“PACT supports today’s announcement. It is a shame that a legal action has to be taken, but illegal websites such as Newzbin2 pose a grave threat to our membership who do not have the resources to combat online copyright infringement.”

In a response to the news, Newzbin state the following:

“This is just an application and not yet a decision of any court. We will be looking to instruct lawyers to fight this on behalf of our UK users. The MPA application to engage in censorship of the Internet for their own petty interests would, if granted, set a dangerous precedent in a Western democracy.

“We don’t want to engage in a polemic but we have fully cooperated with DMCA requests from content owners and we are careful to act lawfully: ‘drive-by’ litigation such as this will cut off access to substantial legitimate content and is entirely unwarranted & disproportionate.”

Source: MPAA Takes Legal Action To Force ISP to Block Newzbin

Members of IPAF include Australian Federation Against Copyright Theft (AFACT), Motion Picture Association (MPA), Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, Australian Visual Software Distributors Association and various cinema owners and DVD rental outlets such as Blockbuster.

Last year IPAF embarked on a campaign to educate Australia’s children on the evils of copyright infringement in an attempt to “motivate a change in attitudes and behavior to reduce public demand for illegal copies of film and television programs.”

While many anti-piracy groups take a fairly aggressive angle when sending their message, IPAF take a more softly-softly approach. If AFACT is bad cop, IPAF is his gentler, more reasonable-sounding counterpart.

Good cop has just launched his new nationwide anti-piracy campaign with the unusual title of ‘Accidental Pirate’.

“New research, released just today, revealed that 34% of Aussies see piracy as stealing or theft but then regularly do it by burning, buying or downloading illegal or unauthorised copies of films or TV programs,” explains IPAF. “In other words, 1 in 3 of us do something that we don’t agree with. So to describe this disconnection between actions and beliefs, we coined the phrase ‘Accidental Pirate’.”

Right. So people know piracy is ‘wrong’ but because they still carry on it’s an ‘accident’? That doesn’t seem to fit very well does it?

You can see what IPAF are trying to do though, it’s just badly executed. If you’re going to educate people on the premise that they didn’t know that their actions were ‘wrong’ in the first place (so as not to immediately antagonize them), at least don’t patronize them. “There, there, you know it’s wrong but let’s just pretend it was an accident, eh?” Please.

So what does the campaign have to say. Well, it’s pretty much standard stuff. The campaign’s homepage is running a Flash questionnaire with five questions that readers have the chance to answer. Getting a question right gets a round of applause from the assembled cinema audience, but getting one wrong gets a big X and a short lesson in copyright.

Questions 2, 3 and 5 all involve copying or buying pirated copies of real DVDs and the legalities of that. People don’t ‘accidentally’ believe that pirate DVDs are legal – do they?

Questions 1 and 4 involve file-sharing but if the industry IPAF claims to protect would simply get their act together, these questions wouldn’t even be necessary.

Question 1: Your favorite TV show has just aired overseas. It won’t be shown here for months. While browsing the web you notice it’s available for download for free. Do you download it?

Every time TV-show downloaders in Australia are asked why they do what they do, one of the top answers is always because they are treated like second-class citizens when it comes to release dates. Why do their favorite series take months to appear officially down under? Whatever the reason, it’s a very, very poor one, and no surprise people turn to BitTorrent.

Question 4: You’re browsing the Internet and come across a free download site. You notice a movie that’s just hit the cinemas here. Do you download it?

If people find those then, yes, they probably would. The movie industry is always very clear – if you see a brand new movie on the Internet it’s illegal, because we (stubbornly) don’t offer this service. This type of piracy could be all but wiped out by offering people a legal alternative at a reasonable price in their own homes.

Quiz aside, it’s all pretty much standard stuff. Movie industry people and actors rolled out to make ‘accidental’ pirates feel sorry for the little guy in the film-making world.

You can take the questionnaire for yourself. If you get any ‘wrong’ move directly to the back of the class, put you hands on your head and please try to do better in the future. And stop accidentally downloading torrents. The movie industry depends on it.

Source: Are You An Accidental Movie and TV Show Pirate?

Newzbin was found liable for copyright infringement and will later this week discover the terms of an injunction which will forbid it from indexing movies and TV shows to which the above complainants own the copyrights.

“We are very disappointed with the judgment,” said Newzbin in a statement emailed to TorrentFreak. “Regrettably the court has accepted the distorted and flawed evidence that Hollywood presented.”

Newzbin says that contrary to the findings of the court, the site has not deliberately indexed infringing material and it did not assist its members who use the site for that purpose.

“The site provides a generalised search facility for binary content found on Usenet and not infringing material. Any of the material we index can be found on any one of a thousand sites on the Internet so pursuit of us is a futile waste of everyone’s time and money,” they added.

TorrentFreak asked Newzbin about the implications of this negative result for other UK-based Usenet indexers.

“They will clearly need to consider this judgement carefully,” the company told us. “We are unique in using editors and that formed a significant basis for our liability, but even absent editors, Usenet indexing in the UK is much more problematic.”

Newzbin then went on to launch an attack on the MPA, who they say are an organization stuck in a technology stone age.

“Rather than addressing their own broken business models & monopolistic commercial practices they seek to curtail innovation and freedom on the Internet.”

Noting the recent heavy lobbying of the UK government by the entertainment industries in respect of the Digital Economy Bill, Newzbin say that the MPA are a sponsor of attempts to bring “Chinese internet censorship” into the UK.

“Perhaps if they used their energy providing what people want rather than buying laws to sustain their own house of cards their might have a stronger future. We certainly reject their attempt to use this decision and our site as an excuse for rushing through undemocratic laws in a wash-up just before an election.”

Echoing the complaints of dozens of file-sharing orientated sites before them, Newzbin went on to criticize the imbalance in resources when contemplating a legal battle against the combined might of the movie studios, noting that this was the only reason for their win.

“Ultimately the dinosaurs of the content industry will need to face reality; the sad thing is that winning cases such as this only damages them and puts their own future in doubt.”

In the meantime, Newzbin will be required to implement some kind of filtering mechanism – so how will that play out?

“We will do what we are required to by the terms of any court order: we feel though that filtering is likely to be imperfect and there is a risk of filters missing material, which concerns us. The site may need to stop delivering all film & TV indexing for a matter of days while we consider how to address the judgement.”

In some respects the ruling against Newzbin has similarities to that imposed against Netherlands-based torrent index, Mininova. With this in mind we asked how this UK ruling might be received by Newzbin’s members and how the reaction would affect its business.

“We are mindful of the effect that filtering had on Mininova’s reputation with users and we hope to address those concerns and remain a useful site without breaching the terms of the order,” they told us.

Nevertheless, the site insists it is not going away, will remain the number one indexer and has great plans for the future. They also extended thanks to their supporters.

“We’d like to thank our users for their support, we’d certainly like them to chip in towards our legal costs! Above all we’d like them to know that we are not going away even if the next few weeks will be turbulent while we deal with the judgement.”

Looking ahead, Newzbin told TorrentFreak that they will appeal if they believe there are realistic grounds for doing so.

“We believe the judgement is flawed and we are analysing it carefully but we have made no final decision,” they concluded.

Source: Newzbin Slams Movie Studios After Court Defeat

Mr Adrian Speck represented the claimants, with David Harris and later Ms Jane Lambert representing Newzbin. The case was heard before Mr Justice Kitchin, who this morning delivered his lengthy decision which is summarized below.

The claimants said that Newzbin is a site focused on piracy. It does this by locating and categorizing illicit copies of movies and displays the titles in its indexes, providing users who search for such items a facility to download the items with one click.

Newzbin conversely said that its site is a “content agnostic” search engine very much like Google, and is designed to index all of Usenet. It offers only hyperlinks, meaning that users can access material directly from their Usenet provider, an activity Newzbin plays no part in.

Mr Speck represented the claimants throughout the case but Mr Harris dropped out of defending Newzbin on February 10th when it became apparent he had acquired shares in Newzbin. Ms Lambert took over from him when the trial resumed on 2 March 2010.

The claimants used Andrew Clark, Head of Forensics at Detica Limited, as their expert witness. His description of Usenet was not challenged in court.

Newzbin is run by Chris Elsworth (aka “Caesium”), Thomas Hurst (aka “Freaky”) and Lee Skillen (aka “Kalante”). All three were, until recently, directors and shareholders in Newzbin.

Court documents give a perhaps surprising insight into the size of the Newzbin business. Its accounts for 2009 reveal that it turned over in excess of £1 million, yielded a profit of more than £360,000 and paid dividends on ordinary shares of £415,000. It has around 700,000 members.

Newzbin’s help guides were referred to in the decision. They state that the site can help people find what they’re looking for, “whether that be obscure music, tv shows, games or movies. Think of us as a TV guide, but we’re a guide that applies to Usenet.”

In addition to various features offered by the site, focus was placed on the function and offering of .NZB files – Usenet’s nearest equivalent to .torrent files. Expert witness Mr Clark demonstrated how they could be used to retrieve a copy of a Harry Potter movie via Newzbin with the Usenet client, GrabIt.

The titles of categories used by Newzbin to index content were highlighted, such as Anime, Apps, Books, Consoles, Emulation, Games, Movies, Music, PDA and TV.

Sub-sections of the Movies category were highlighted including CAM, Screener, Telesync, R5 Retail, Blu-Ray, DVD, HD-DVD DivX, XviD. A witness for FACT, the Federation Against Copyright Theft, explained in detail why some of these categories are a “strong indication” of piracy.

Newzbin has members called ‘editors’ who help to compile reports on material to be found on Usenet. Newzbin’s own documentation was used to show that the site encouraged editors to post links to movies. The verdict notes that to assist editors useful links to IMDb and VCDQuality are provided, the latter being useful to provide information about “screeners”.

Referencing rules that Newzbin publishes for the attention of editors, ostensibly to protect the site (i.e not posting NZB‘s which link to warez, movies or music), Justice Kitchin states that these warnings are “entirely cosmetic”, are not intended, nor are they adhered to. Newzbin knew that infringing copies were being made available to users and yet no action was taken against editors, he wrote.

Referring to groups indexed by Newzbin such as alt.binaries.warez, Justice Kitchin said he is satisfied that the term ‘warez’ refers to content protected by copyright from illicit sources. Newzbin, he said, is therefore designed to search newsgroups which contain infringing material, an assertion that Newzbin’s Chris Elsworth had no “satisfactory explanation” for.

Justice Kitchin said Newzbin “encouraged its editors to report and has assisted its users to gain access” to infringing copies of movies.

Newzbin was also criticized for its “delisting” or notice and takedown procedures, which were referred to as a “cosmetic” and “cumbersome” mechanism designed to “render it impractical” for rights holders to have material removed.

Justice Kitchin went on to reject Newzbin’s assertion that an insignificant amount of links in their database relate to infringing content. Around 50,000 reports (.NZBs) were checked and around 97% had a valid link to IMDb (TF: Kitchin apparently assumes that everything on IMDB is not free to share), 0.7% to Amazon and a further 1.5% were otherwise shown to be commercially available. Only 0.3% were not shown to be commercially available, evidence which the court found “extremely powerful”.

The verdict addresses in some detail whether Newzbin had knowledge of infringing material being made available via the site. Newzbin said they did not but would’ve taken action to remove items and take action against any editor posting such material. Justice Kitchen said “a very different picture” emerged when Elsworth was cross-examined.

A transcript of the questioning reveals Elsworth being aggressively cross-examined over the nature of the Blu-Ray category on the site and whether it would contain copyright infringing material.

“I am satisfied that Mr Elsworth well knew that these categories were primarily intended for new commercial films,” wrote Justice Kitchin, while referencing a comment made by Elsworth in January 2007 where he notes that Blu-Ray had “been cracked officially”.

The verdict also states that Newzbin was told that the site is being used to infringe the claimants’ copyrights, yet no action has been taken against those reports (NZBs), the editors that reported them, or users that downloaded them.

Justice Kitchin said that considering the structure of Newzbin, the way they categorize content and the way they have encouraged editors to report movies, he has no doubt that Newzbin knew that “the vast majority of films in the Movies category of Newzbin are commercial and so very likely to be protected by copyright, and that members of Newzbin who use its NZB facility to download those materials, including the claimants’ films, are infringing that copyright.”

For the claimants, Mr Clark gave evidence that it would be straightforward for Newzbin to restrict access to the Movie and TV categories on the site and/or employ a filter based on a list of titles provided by the movie companies. Justice Kitchin said that the Newzbin programmers are skilled enough to implement “an effective content filtering system.”

Justice Kitchin found that:

i) Newzbin operates a site “designed and intended to make infringing copies of films readily available to its premium members”.
ii) The site is structured to promote infringement by guiding members to infringing copies via NZBs.
iii) Use of the NZB feature “inevitably” results in the creation of an infringing copy.
iv) Newzbin encouraged and induced its editors to make reports of movies protected by copyright and assisted users to infringe by providing advice.
v) Newzbin profited from infringement.

Newzbin was found liable to the claimants for infringement of their copyrights because it authorized the copying of their movies, “procured and engaged with its premium members in a common design to copy the claimants’ films” and communicated the claimants’ movies to the public.

The claimants appear to be seeking a broad injunction against Newzbin which would prevent it from including any item which infringes copyright in their index. This would extend to all works, not just those to which the claimants own the copyright.

Justice Kitchin wrote that he will not grant such a broad injunction and would instead impose limits on its scope to restrain Newzbin from infringing the copyrights of those movies to which the plaintiffs own the copyright.

“We welcome the Court’s decision today,” said Ted Shapiro, the Motion Picture Association’s general counsel for Europe.

“Newzbin is a source of immense damage to the creative sector in the UK and worldwide. This is an important decision and it sends a clear message that websites focusing on providing viewers with pirated film and TV programmes infringe copyright and are liable for their actions even where those websites don’t themselves host the content.

“This decision will help to support the continued investment in new legal online services and the creation of new films and television shows for enjoyment by audiences both in the UK and around the world.”

Newzbin was given the opportunity to contribute to this and earlier articles, but did not respond to our requests.

The exact terms of the injunction will be announced later this week.

Source: High Court Finds Newzbin Liable For Copyright Infringement

While most of Hollywood’s legal might was focused on the snowballing BitTorrent scene, Usenet downloading also gained in popularity – and exposure – and by 2008 it soon had Newzbin in the spotlight.

Newzbin received complaints from the studios in May that year, stating that the site was listing NZBs which linked to movies on Usenet which infringed their members’ copyright. In December, Newzbin confirmed it was removing some NZB files at copyright holders’ request but it wasn’t enough and the MPA filed for an injunction.

The London High Court showdown between Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & Others v Newzbin Ltd before Mr Justice Kitchin began February 1st 2010. Details coming out of the case have been relatively few and entirely from Newzbin’s perspective. TorrentFreak contacted the MPA for their take but they told us they could not comment on an on-going case.

Newzbin reported that the plaintiffs opened with explanations of the .NZB format and how they differ from regular HTML hyperlinks along with accusations that Newzbin’s backend code specifically sought out copyright works on Usenet.

For their part, Newzbin disputed most MPA accusations but nevertheless ended the first day expressing confidence in Judge Justice Kitchin and his ability to preside over a fair trial.

Referencing “bizarre side issues”, “internal Newzbin issues” (later partly clarified as non-conflict related) and the falling ill of Newzbin admin ‘Caesium’ under cross-examination by the plaintiffs’ lawyer, by Day 3 of the trial events had clearly taken a turn for the strange.

After some rest, Caesium re-took the stand on Day 4 and completed his cross-examination, but the picture painted by Newzbin lacked optimism.

“It would be fair to say that the picture painted in court of Newzbin has not been an entirely positive one. Whilst it is hard to double guess Mr Justice Kitchin, Newzbin may have some difficulties in the near future,” said the site’s legal team in a statement, adding that Caesum had been accused of lying repeatedly under oath.

Newzbin requested a pause in proceedings to hire more lawyers, this was granted and there was a 2 week pause in proceedings. During the break, Newzbin made an announcement to clarify a number of points.

If the site lost its case, it would not be closing down – the MPA isn’t asking for that. It’s the manner in which the site operates that’s under the microscope.

“The message we want you to take away is that, win or lose, you can be confident that the site is here to stay in the long term,” said Newzbin. Other assurances were made in respect of user data, which we’ll come to in a moment.

The trial restarted this week on Tuesday 2nd March and concluded yesterday. As previously noted, the MPA are keeping mum right now but Newzbin reported its version of events. The key points:

Although Newzbin believes that the MPA may have been able to convince the court that the indexer facilitated the infringements of its users, it will not be able to prove damages or losses from copying. This stands to reason, as any infringements would have taken place through an entirely different infrastructure to that offered by Newzbin.

Newzbin will not be shut down. There could, however, be an “enquiry as to damages” and a new trial to consider the terms of any injunction which requires the site to block MPA material.

This could mean that Newzbin is required, Mininova-style, to develop and implement filtering mechanisms.

“At the moment we remain unfiltered and we would fight for the current notice and take down system that we already use. Again this is just our best guess and we may be well wide of the mark,” said the company in a statement this morning.

The previously-mentioned Newzbin assurance regarding privacy of user data goes as follows. Although the site does log some activity, it only keeps this data for a short period and details of NZB files downloaded by users are not stored. This means that the MPA will not be able to get their hands on sensitive data.

“One thing the Claimants did complain about was that Newzbin ‘deliberately arranged it’s systems so that no user details were available: even if we got an Anton Pillar [sic] there would be nothing to seize as no logs were kept’,” said this morning’s announcement, adding;

“Equally, since the site has lawful non-infringing use (our hunch is that the judge accepted our arguments on this: he seemed receptive to our submission that GPL, Creative Commons & non-copyright works were on the Indexes) a mere membership of Newzbin proves nothing against any user: the Claimants didn’t contend this anyway.”

The MPA declined to comment at this point, but told TorrentFreak that they believe the verdict could be handed down before the end of the month.

Source: Newzbin vs MPA Usenet ‘Filtering’ Trial Concludes

After years of trouble-free operation as the MPAA focused on shutting down the growing ‘threat’ of the snowballing BitTorrent scene, in May 2008 the operator of Newzbin made an announcement.

The company which owns Newzbin had received a threatening letter from the Motion Picture Association (MPA), the MPAA’s big brother. In the letter the MPA claimed that some of the site’s editors (users who report on the location of material uploaded to the worldwide Usenet system) were listing NZBs which linked to movies on Usenet which infringed their member’s copyright.

“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,” said ‘Caesium’, the owner of Newzbin.

Caesium added that the site had never condoned the distribution or indexing of copyright works and insisted that site staff would act immediately to remove any items found to be infringing copyright.

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 were appropriate.

“We believe that, or we wouldn’t still be here,” he added.

In December 2008, Newzbin confirmed that it had been removing NZB files which allegedly linked to copyright works stored on Usenet. The MPA still chose to file an injunction against the site.

Now, well over a year later, the showdown of Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation & ors v Newzbin Ltd is set to begin next week before Mr Justice Kitchin in London’s High Court.

According to an announcement yesterday by Newzbin’s legal team, the case should last around a week but it’s unknown when any verdict will be handed down following its conclusion.

As we all know, the recent trial of Alan Ellis ended in an acquittal for the ex-OiNK admin and, just like Newzbin, his site hosted no copyright works and provided only meta data which linked to material hosted elsewhere.

However, Ellis’s charge was one of fraud, allegedly conducted by an individual and dealt with under criminal law, while that leveled against Newzbin is one of allowing and inducing illegal copying, i.e copyright infringement, but carried out by a bona fide company under civil law.

After Ellis’s acquittal, John Kennedy of the IFPI expressed disappointment at the “spectacular failure” of the criminal action and suggested that these type of complex cases should not be held in a crown court, but in the Chancery Division of the High Court.

This is exactly where the Newzbin case is being heard, so this is certainly one to watch. Unlike Ellis who faced possible jail time, Newzbin faces a claim for damages should it lose its case.

Source: Usenet Indexer Prepares For MPAA High Court Battle

Titled “Escape From Terror Byte City” the book tells the story of two young boys who attempt to download the latest Transformers movie from a P2P website. Of course, when the two fire-up their file-sharing software all hell breaks loose.

Surprisingly, the story itself has nothing to do with the consequences of copyright infringement. The comic book that is supposed to educate children about file-sharing is nothing more than a scary story about viruses, worms, trojan horses and identity theft.

It’s quite sad really when you think about it. Apparently the MPA and their anti-piracy partners have decided to give up on the message that piracy hurts their business in the hopes that horror stories about infected computers will deter youngsters from downloading copyrighted works instead.

That aside, the risks of being exposed to viruses and malware on P2P networks have always been greatly exaggerated. If we follow the logic of the MPA we might as well ban email because of all the trojans and phishing scams that are sent around. Or stop selling USB drives because people might lose them and potentially expose personal information that shouldn’t be on there in the first place.

The comic is conveniently avoiding the word copyright, perhaps because the 10 year crusade against copyright infringement hasn’t led to any results. The propaganda doesn’t work without providing alternatives, and every parent knows that forbidding something quite often leads to the opposite result.

Still, the entertainment industry seems unconcerned with innovation and new ways to adapt to the digital era. Instead they prefer to focus on promoting new ways to punish potential consumers. Aside from pushing the comic book, the Hollywood lobbyist also lobbied for the return of the controversial ‘3-strikes’ legislation which was scrapped earlier this year after public pressure.

Will they ever learn? A scanned copy of the full comic book is available on Mininova. This one’s going to be a collectors item, for sure.

Source: Anti-Pirates Scare Kids with Propagandistic Comic Book

Mininova’s lawyer argued that the site is already taking measures to ensure rights holders can protect their content, and this amounts to more than they are required to do under the law. The site has a ‘notice and takedown’ policy and recently started offering an infohash filter where content owners can blacklist torrents.

Mininova’s case against BREIN was heard at the Utrecht court. Three judges have been appointed to the case. One of them is a replacement for a judge who was taken off the case a few weeks ago because he was connected to the entertainment industry. The hearing started at 1 PM with BREIN’s lawyer Dirk Visser.

Visser began by informing the court that Mininova has over 5 million daily users who use the site to download copyrighted content. A brief look at the site’s homepage clearly shows that they link to illegal content, and their business models is to make money off the millions of ads that are displayed, he said.

Mininova’s attempt to offer a distribution platform to publishers through their “featured content” section is nonsense, BREIN’s lawyer insisted. According to research conducted by BREIN 92% of the torrents on Mininova point to ‘illegal’ content, and the tag cloud with popular searches also shows that illegal content is what people are mainly looking for on the site.

In 2006 and 2007 BREIN and Mininova had lengthy discussions on how to deal with copyrighted content, Visser said. Mininova wanted BREIN to come up with specific infohashes that should be in the filter, and BREIN wanted Mininova to cover the costs. They never reached an agreement and the negotiations ended.

All in all Visser is arguing that Mininova aids in distributing copyright infringing works, and BREIN demands that the site installs a filtering mechanism that will put an end to this. Mininova will have to cover the costs of such a copyright filter themselves, they say.

Next up was Mininova’s lawyer Vita Zwaan. She started out by informing the court that this is a landmark case because it’s the first to make a judgment about the legality of the BitTorrent platform in The Netherlands, pointing out that this case obviously has far reaching consequences.

Zwaan further told the court that, while the hearing was taking place, approximately 180 torrents would be added to the site’s database and that Mininova has no knowledge of the content currently tracked by these torrents. In addition Zwaan explained that Mininova has partnerships with content owners to distribute works though their distribution platform.

On top of this, Mininova offers several options for content owners to take ‘infringing’ torrents off the site, the lawyer explained. Together with the Motion Picture Association (MPA), Mininova started experimenting with a content filter through which torrents can taken off the site by the content owners.

The filter trial is a success according to Mininova’s lawyer, who quoted one of TorrentFreak’s recent articles to point this out. BREIN also had to option to participate in the filtering trial so they could see for themselves how it works, but BREIN rejected this offer.

It is unclear what BREIN’s demands actually are according to Zwaan. They want Mininova to implement “preventive measure” but are vague about the details. However, BREIN doesn’t want to provide the info-hashes for the torrents it wants removed, and argues that this is something Mininova should do themselves. This is the opposite of what the MPA (a member of BREIN) is doing now.

According to Mininova’s lawyer, this disagreement on who should provide information on what to filter is what the case is all about.

A keyword filter that was proposed by BREIN is unworkable according to Zwaan because it would result in too many false positives. A filter for the keyword ‘office’, as BREIN suggested, would result in the removal of 92 torrents linking to “Open Office” she said.

Mininova’s lawyer then discussed some of the costs Mininova made thus far to take down torrents upon request from copyright holders (though the old system). She said that 155,876 takedown requests have been reviewed which cost the site 250,000 euro ($350,000). In addition, Mininova invested several thousand euros in the content filter.

Zwaan went on to explain that Mininova is not a necessary nor sufficient part of the BitTorrent download process. Unlike The Pirate Bay they don’t host a public tracker, and neither do they offer a BitTorrent client through which users can download torrents. BREIN argued otherwise and this is incorrect Zwaan said.

Towards the end of her plea, Zwaan argued that Mininova is not infringing the rights of various copyright holders as BREIN stated. She cited several cases in and outside The Netherlands to make point out why, and pointed out that The Pirate Bay may not have been found guilty if they had a notice and takedown policy like Mininova has.

After a short break the hearing continued briefly and the judges asked both lawyers for clarification on some issues. Mininova’s lawyer was asked about the moderators that Mininova has, and why they remove porn but not copyrighted content. Mininova explained that the moderators handle problem reports from users (about virusses, porn, etc.), while the Mininova admins handle the copyright complaints. The site has around five moderators, a number which the changes from time to time.

After roughly three hours the hearing ended and it’s now up to the judges to come up with a decision. The verdict is due on July 15. Erik Dubbelboer and the other Mininova founders think they have the law on their side. “We have confidence in the outcome of the case and we believe Mininova will continue to exist,” Erik told TorrentFreak.

This is a developing story, info might be added.

Source: Mininova and BREIN Clash in Court

Intellectual Property Minister David Lammy endorsed the launch of the ambitious ‘Fake Free London’ project, noting that the police will be required to enforce already-existing laws: “Legislation alone will not combat counterfeiting and piracy. Good law is great but enforced law is better.” He said the aim of the campaign was send a message that people are serious about tackling the problem, and that consumers and legitimate businesses would be better off as a result.

Apparently there have already been dozens of arrests, but it is unclear if these were connected to running an operation manufacturing the counterfeit DVDs, or selling them. In the UK right now, the difference in terms of how the courts deal with the people at the top compared to the bottom is marked.

Street sellers, often from other countries, are at the bottom of the food chain and are usually cautioned by the police, DVDs confiscated and sent on their way. Some receive small fines but more usually, those that continually flout the warnings could find themselves the subject of an Anti-Social Behavior Order. If they breach the terms of those, it’s possible they’ll go to prison, but few do. It’s hard to see that this process is much of a deterrent, it relies on an offender getting caught lots of times. Besides, the UK has very little prison space right now.

Towards the top end of the food chain, things are different. Last month, another UK man Steven Adams, a fairly large-scale counterfeiter who also fitted huge numbers of XBox and Playstation modchips, received a fairly hefty sentence from the courts. He pleaded guilty to 44 charges, including the manufacture and selling around £1 million of counterfeit products. Adams had toured computer and flea markets all over the UK and at the time of his arrest, police found 31,000 counterfeit discs in his possession. He had numerous expensive properties, vehicles and possessions but didn’t try to hide his wealth, something which he will now regret as the court takes action to seize them. For his sins, Adams also received 3 years in jail.

The punishment for commercial piracy in the UK starts with a simple caution and goes up 10 years in jail and an unlimited fine, so it seems the tools to deal with the problem are already there, but is there the will to start locking more people up? Time will tell, but it seems unlikely. So can the MPA win its very own Olympic event? A bronze medal, absolute maximum.

Source: Movie Industry: London ‘Fake-Free Zone’ by 2012

On Monday night, 56 year-old Tong, now a leading lawyer, was having dinner in a Sungai Golok border town restaurant with friends, but when he left he was killed by a single shot from an assailant with a sawn-off shotgun. The killer then fled on a waiting motorcycle, with some reports suggesting two men were involved.

Ruling out robbery as a motive for the attack, deputy police chief Seman Wan Salleh said that he believed the killer was eating in the same restaurant as Tong, although the pair had no contact while they were there and no immediate incident prompted the attack. Police are looking into the possibility that this was an assassination.

A former policeman, Tong could’ve made enemies in many areas of his work, but commercial piracy is big business in his part of the world and attracts people prepared to take action direct action to protect their business.

MPA anti-piracy pooches, Lucky and Flo, found themselves under death-threat earlier this year, after they were involved in a major operation that netted around $3 million worth of pirate discs and burning equipment. The threats from the crime syndicate involved were taken seriously, with the Malaysian government taking steps to protect the dogs. This year, another anti-piracy dog, Manny, died under mysterious circumstances.

Divorced two years ago from his wife Irene, Tong leaves two sons and a daughter.

Source: Ex-MPAA and IFPI Anti-Piracy Enforcer Shot Dead