Through the court BREIN demanded that NSE delete all infringing content from its servers, and in 2011 the Court of Amsterdam sided with the copyright holders.

The Court argued that NSE willingly facilitated copyright infringement through its services. In its verdict the Court ruled that NSE had to remove all copyrighted content, and filter future posts for possible copyright infringements.

Responding to the verdict the Usenet provider said that it was economically unfeasible to filter all messages. The company therefore saw no other option than to shut down its services while the appeal was pending.

This week the Appeals Court ruled on the case overturning the previous verdict, setting a more positive precedent for Usenet providers and similar services.

The Court concluded that NSE does not facilitate copyright infringement as long as it maintains a procedure through which copyright holders can send unlimited takedown notices.

In addition, the Court decided that proactive filtering of copyrighted content is not required, as that conflicts with existing jurisprudence of the European Court of Justice.

“We are very pleased with this ruling,” NSE CEO Patrick Schreurs says. “The Court correctly states that a Usenet provider such as News-Service Europe can not be expected to proactively monitor the messages others place.”

The ruling this week is an interlocutory verdict. The Court still has to rule on how NSE’s notice and takedown procedure should operate. Afterwards, both BREIN and NSE still have the option to take the case to the Supreme Court.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Thus far, these lawsuits have almost exclusively focused on BitTorrent users, but new legal action by several major book publishers suggests that Usenet uploaders are also being eyed.

Cengage Learning, John Wiley and Sons, Elsevier and McGraw-Hill recently obtained subpoenas from the U.S. District Court of Columbia, requiring Usenet providers to hand over the personal details of two very active uploaders.

The publishers state that they caught the uploaders “Hockwards” and “Rockhound” sharing hundreds of books. The pair are allegedly connected to Usenet services provided by Usenetserver and XS News, and both companies are now being held responsible for the infringing uploads.

“This information is being provided to you as the Usenet provider responsible for providing Rockhound with the accounts through which the infringement is occurring,” the publishers write in one of their letters.

“Based on the information at our disposal, we have good faith belief that the material uploaded to Usenet by Rockhound is infringing the book publishers’ copyrights. Over the past four months alone, Rockhound has uploaded hundreds of infringing books.”

The book publishers are asking the Usenet providers to hand over all information they have on the two uploaders, including billing records, phone numbers and addresses. In addition, the publishers list hundreds of infringing books that they want the providers to remove from their servers.

TorrentFreak talked to a representative of the book publishers who informed us that they have to protect their rights online, to guarantee that high quality books will continue to be published in the future. Targeting Usenet providers and their users is part of this strategy.

“The publishers are actively monitoring and enforcing their rights on the internet, including on Usenet. Any individual or company that uploads large quantities of digital copies of the publishers’ books for others to download without authorization is a potential target for enforcement,” the representative told us.

“Those individuals and companies are violating the law, no matter where they live and no matter why they are doing it,” the publishers add.

Whether the information obtained through the subpoenas will help the book publishers to identify both users has yet to be seen. It is not uncommon for uploaders to take measures to obfuscate their identities by using prepaid credit cards, VPN services and false contact information.

That said, the action against these Usenet uploaders is significant and in line with developments over the past year. Gradually, we’ve seen anti-piracy efforts begin to include Usenet providers and related services.

Copyright holders, for example, have rapidly increased the number of DMCA takedown notices they send to indexing and hosting services, leading to the shutdown of NZBMatrix. In addition, payment providers such as PayPal are banning Usenet related sites over piracy concerns, causing sites such as Newzbin2 to fold.

Although very rare at the moment, these recent legal actions by book publishers show that Usenet users aren’t immune to legal troubles either.

Update: This article has been updated to make clear that one of the users was a Usenetserver customer. Highwinds is not providing Usenet services.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The most visible elements are the public torrent sites like The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents and any of the others from the current Top 10. Generally (censorship efforts aside) these sites can be accessed by just about anyone. All that is needed is a torrent client and the ability to read.

A level down in accessibility (but a level up in class if you believe their members) are the private torrent sites. You need to be invited to access these, a situation which no doubt pleases many rightsholders as their walled gardens naturally limit growth and access to content.

Leaving links forums and cyberlockers to one side, Usenet is another good example of a multi-tiered system. Although they tend to cost money to access (which could be considered another barrier), newsgroups are then available to all. Every file and post can be downloaded by anyone via a decent newsgroup search engine such as Binsearch.

Step down a level in accessibility (but a level up in class if you believe their members) and you’ll find the Usenet indexing forums and discussion boards. These can be compared very generally to private torrent sites but with a major difference. While their indexes exist within the confines of their members-only service, the content they rely on is held publicly on Usenet.

This situation causes these sites problems that private BitTorrent trackers just don’t have. Just like everyone else on Usenet, private indexes are at the mercy of anti-piracy companies sending huge numbers of DMCA takedowns to Usenet providers which target content. As previously reported, this phenomenon is growing at an alarming pace.

But despite all the takedowns, content is still being uploaded to Usenet in massive quantities because after all, anti-piracy outfits can’t take it all down. Also, significant amounts of this content is uploaded by members of private indexes but because Usenet itself is public, anyone can access it. As a result, everyone benefits.

Well, that’s the theory at least.

Due to the takedown situation, things are changing. Tired of having content they upload deleted following DMCA notices, uploaders from private indexes are taking measures to ensure that anti-piracy company bots can’t easily identify specific works. As can be seen by the image below, uploaders are doing this by encrypting the filenames of the content they upload so that only site members know how to decrypt them.

This means that automated anti-piracy systems scanning Usenet using basic text-searching methods can no longer identify the names of specific copyright releases by just looking at the filename. There are hoops to jump through now, adding roadblocks in the way of simply skimming thousands of newsgroups and issuing thousands of takedowns.

While that might sound like a fun way to annoy an anti-piracy company, it is also a great way to ensure that content on the public Usenet is rendered unfindable by regular methods such as using a newsgroup search engine. This means that content that was once uploaded for the entertainment of anyone is now only of use to people who know how to unencrypt the filenames.

Sure, there are some ways around it. Content can still be downloaded without knowing what it is in the hope that when it completes it will turn out to be what you wanted all along, but that’s hardly a good solution. Some people recommend peering inside a release’s PAR2 or NFO files for clues of the actual release name, but that’s far from ideal too.

Therefore, for some Usenet fans the only workable solution towards a decent experience is to start joining up to some of the many NZB sites around today, but even that can prove an annoyance. Many are closed to new members and a rising number of those that are open expect people to pay for their services, raising the question of whether releases are encrypted (or indeed passworded as they have been for years) for security reasons or simply to raise revenue.

The end result is that Usenet is experiencing an upsurge in DRM-like mechanisms which limit access to content, at the same time as thwarting the anti-piracy companies attempting to do the same with their takedowns.

It’s a strange situation that is clearly frustrating users who choose not to be part of private communities. So what are they doing in response? Going back to the sites listed in the second paragraph of this article of course, something which pleases many Usenet elitists who never wanted their community to become as open as it is today.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Copyright holders have rapidly increased the number of DMCA takedown notices they send to indexing and hosting services. In addition, payment providers such as Paypal are banning Usenet related sites over piracy concerns.

As a result of these and other changes Newzbin2 killed their service at the end of last month, and today the very popular Usenet indexer NZBMatrix follows in its footsteps.

NZBMatrix shut down a few hours ago and left a statement on the site explaining why. The Usenet indexer says it had to make this decision due to a “very large takedown request” from major Hollywood movie studios”

While a takedown notice doesn’t have to mean the end of a website, NZBMatrix appears to have trouble automating the process. And with the increasing rate at which the notices come in, NZBMatrix can’t keep up anymore.

“As everyone is aware we are DMCA/Takedown notice compliant, and always have been. Once this notice is completed we are left with an impossible task of policing our indexing bots. Even then it won’t stop there, there will be follow-up notices etc,” they explain.

NZBMatrix adds that the more copyrighted material is removed, the less content is available to index properly, rendering a service such as NZBMatrix useless.

“The Usenet Indexing scene is going through some changes, with content being removed from pretty much every provider its making the existence of an indexer irrelevant if the content does not even exists anymore.”

The increase in takedown notices, coupled with issues at payment providers eventually resulted in NZBMatrix shutting down voluntarily. Sister site NZBxxx was shutdown as well and displays the same statement.

With millions of users a month NZBMatrix was one of the major Usenet indexing services. The site was particularly popular in Denmark, Australia and the UK.

While there are still many alternatives to NZBMatrix around, it’s become increasingly clear that copyright holders are determined to wipe Usenet clean bit by bit.

Below is the farewell notice that was posted on NZBMatrix this morning.

—

The End…

It is with our regret to announce that NZBMATRIX has closed.

We have had to make this decision due to a very large takedown request from a company called Wiggin LLC. These represent the following: Federation Against Copyright Theft Limited (“FACT”), Paramount Home Entertainment International Limited; Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Limited; The Walt Disney Company Limited; Twentieth Century Fox Film Company Limited; Universal Pictures (UK) Limited; Warner Bros. Entertainment UK Limited.

As everyone is aware we are DMCA/Takedown notice compliant, and always have been.Once this notice is completed we are left with an impossible task of policing our indexing bots. Even then it won’t stop there, there will be follow-up notices etc.

Coupled with this is problems with payment providers, we have been through pretty much everyone out there, in the end they all pull out. There are massive server/bandwidth costs to pay, with the payments in-stability this is a very hard task.

NZBMATRIX has never been the subject of any legal issues or threats.

Also the Usenet Indexing scene is going through some changes, with content being removed from pretty much every provider its making the existence of an indexer irrelevant if the content does not even exists anymore.

So it’s time for us to bow out…

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

On Tuesday, PayPal cut off its services to five Usenet resellers including XSUsenet, EasyUsenet and Usenet4U, reports the Dutch news site Tweakers. The Usenet providers can no longer accept PayPal payments and the funds that remain in their accounts have been frozen for 180 days.

While this is the first time that we have heard about Usenet providers being banned, the actions don’t come as a complete surprise. To be accepted by PayPal, file-hosting services now have to comply with a list of far-reaching demands entirely targeted at copyright-infringing and otherwise illegal files.

These terms also apply to Newsgroups.

Several of the disconnected Usenet providers confirm that their accounts were suspended because they violated the above terms. However, at least one of the affected companies said it was never asked for any of the information detailed above, while it clearly indicated that it was operating a Usenet service.

PayPal’s decision is a financial blow to the companies involved. Firstly because customers who prefer to pay through PayPal will take their business elsewhere, and secondly because they lose access to a substantial amount of funds.

TorrentFreak previously reported that several major file-hosting services suffered the same fate as these Usenet providers. Although PayPal was willing to continue doing business with some, the set of demands was too extreme for many file-sharing companies to comply with.

Just how far PayPal is prepared to go was explained to us by Putlocker. The UK-based company had its PayPal account frozen several months ago after it refused to allow the payment provider to snoop on files uploaded by its users.

“They basically wanted access to the backend to monitor all the files being uploaded, and listing all files of users if they wanted, regardless of the privacy setting that the user might have selected,” Putlocker told TorrentFreak.

“This is a complete invasion of privacy on PayPal’s part, as it’s none of their business what files users keep in their account. We have a solid abuse handling policy already, and we don’t feel a 3rd party company has any business snooping on our users,” the company added.

MediaFire, another large cyberlocker, also said it stopped accepting PayPal after the company was unable to reach an agreement with the payment company.

While there are still file-hosting services and Usenet providers that accept PayPal payments, this number is expected to decline further in the months to come. It is clear that PayPal’s new policies are in part the result of the copyright lobby. The question is, where will PayPal draw the line?

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Chances are, most people reading this post will have used BitTorrent and will have a good idea how it works and what its benefits are. Top of the list for many will be the fact that it’s completely free to use. Others will point to the huge libraries of content and the not-too-punishing learning curve to get started.

Usenet users, on the other hand, will enthuse about the speeds of the newsgroups. They will boast how content stays live for years and how their chosen download method has superior privacy and security when compared to P2P.

In reality, most people won’t have any experience with Usenet and as a result won’t have struggled with the steep learning curve and probably never will. Because unlike BitTorrent, Usenet is not free, so this obstacle is a deal-breaker for the credit card-less. That said, if you’ve never tested Usenet because the cost and learning curve has put you off, today’s your lucky day.

A new service from UsenetStorm reduces the complexity of Usenet downloading by providing access to binary content through a standard web-browser. Best of all, the entry-level service is completely free of charge.

“The main reason for creating UsenetStorm was to offer Usenet binary downloads through HTTP, since file lockers are getting more restrictive and torrent users are being targeted by weak Government puppets,” UsenetStorm owner William Thomas told TorrentFreak.

“Even though UsenetStorm launched its first beta 3 years ago, it’s taken a lot of time and investment to be able to offer the service we do today. Usenet has a lot of content to offer but its gone largely unnoticed over the years. By offering Usenet as SaaS (Software as a Service) we’re trying to bring Usenet in to the modern ‘web 2.0′ world.”

Regular Usenet providers require a user to run a software client in order to grab content via NZB files (think .torrent files for Usenet), but with UsenetStorm the whole thing is done through a simple web interface.

Additionally, even when traditional companies offer a free Usenet trial they still require users to register their credit cards, a huge problem for those who don’t have one. UsenetStorm’s basic service is completely free, no strings.

“The only restriction for free users is 500mb per NZB file and download speeds are capped at 5mbit. Usage is unlimited to everyone without registration,” William adds.

What this means is if you want to download a release from Usenet that’s bigger than 500mb, each NZB file you create will need to link to a maximum of 500mb of files. You can, however, make as many as you like.

Basic Tutorial – Making an NZB file and downloading content.

For this you’ll need a suitable Usenet search engine – NZBIndex.nl or Binsearch.info will do just fine. The latter is less cluttered but the former shows the size of each file to download, useful when keeping within the 500mb limit of UsenetStorm.

So, we searched Binsearch for ‘Dan Bull’ and came across his Mass Effect release, shown below.

As you can see, we’ve ticked the box to say that’s the collection of files we want to download. Next, simply click the ‘Create NZB’ button on the site and Binsearch will send you an .NZB file which, like a .torrent file, ‘points’ to the data we want to download, in this case Dan’s music.

Now, we head back to UsenetStorm. Click ‘Choose File’ and browse to the hard drive location containing the .NZB file sent to us by Binsearch.

Then, simply click ‘Download’ and UsenetStorm will grab the files you want from Usenet and store them on its own servers.

When the big button appears saying “Go To Download” – click it – and then click the final ‘Download’ button.

UsenetStorm will then send you the files you asked for, all wrapped up in a single ZIP file which you’ll need to unpack. And that’s it. If you want any more files, simply head back to the first step and repeat.

While the technicalities of PAR files are outside the scope of this article, advanced Usenet users might be interested to know that they are all handled on the UsenetStorm servers. On the other hand, those new to Usenet can be relieved that with UsenetStorm PAR files aren’t needed.

On the privacy front and in addition to all the usual newsgroup security, the only information gathered for unrestricted UsenetStorm premium accounts is an email address and heavily encrypted password. IP addresses are not stored and SSL downloads will come along in the near future.

Overall, UsenetStorm offers a very nice service for people to test out Usenet for free to see if it’s for them. More experienced users might feel more at home getting their hands dirty with a standard Usenet provider and tools like SABnzbd, but for ease of use this is difficult to beat.

We forgot the first rule of Usenet again – sorry

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Two decades ago 3.5″ disks were the most sought after medium to distribute files. At the time, their massive 1.4 MB file size was more than enough to distribute files. But things got really interesting when people started to swap files on the Internet.

In just 2 score years, filesharing has evolved into an amazingly efficient process which has enhanced lives everywhere. It has brought great exposure to underexposed types of media and democratized distribution, making it possible for individuals to share files with the rest of the world at virtually no cost.

Let’s briefly examine how filesharing has become what it is today in a non-exhaustive overview.

BBS: The Early Days (70s-90s)

The BBS, or Bulletin Board System, has been largely attributed with the beginning of contemporary digital filesharing. Beginning with the Hayes Smartmodem, Bulletin Board Systems became automatic enough that Sysops (or administrators) were able to own and operate these mediums from their own homes as both a hobby and, later, as a business. Typically, the BBS was almost like an intranet in which users would dial-in with their modems to read/send messages, access news, and most importantly for us, share files.

Shareware became incredibly popular through the distribution provided by Bulletin Board Systems. From Wolfenstein to Commander Keen, users were able to learn about a BBS by word of mouth and, in its pinnacle, through printed magazines focusing on BBS’s. Many well-known software packages, including PKZIP, were made popular through the BBS. Many users today still use PKZIP’s .zip algorithm when compressing and decompressing archives.

There are still many traditional Bulletin Board Systems in operation today.

Usenet: Beginnings of Decentralization (Late 70s-Present)

Usenet or Newsgroups were similar to Bulletin Board Systems. However, they operated using UUCP and were able to transcend beyond the centralization of a BBS. Essentially, Usenet servers were able to receive files and re-distribute them amongst other Usenet servers effectively creating multiple copies of messages and files across hundreds upon thousands of servers. Usenet was the medium for discussions which gave birth to several projects, including the World Wide Web, Linux, and Mosaic, amongst other amazing projects.

While Usenet has been in existence since the late 70s, major filesharing did not typically occur until much later. In 1993, Eugene Roshal created RAR which allowed users to split files into multipart archives. Given the decentralized copy-nature of Usenet, this helped distribute files much faster and more efficiently, as corruption in file transfers no longer required files to be re-uploaded in their entirety.

Although many may disagree, Usenet is still very much in use today. However, it is used mostly for filesharing rather than for its original purpose of messaging, which has been mostly replaced by contemporary web forums and IRC.

FTP and FXP: Topsites and the ISO Scene (90s-Present)

Soon after, the underground filesharing scene gave birth to an intricate private network of FTP sites known as Topsites. These networks were based on invite only systems and adopted many of the features of Usenet.

Generally, release groups would upload new media to their release servers and create various kinds of announcements thereof (generally, IRC bot based). Then, couriers who had access to the release servers, as well as other servers, would transport or “race” new releases from one server to another, typically with the use of FXP. By doing so, they would earn credits (typically 1:3 ratio) for uploading files as long as the file was considered to be appropriate and unique (not a dupe — hence the racing).

Through this culture and rewards system, files eventually would make their way to topsites all over the world in this decentralized nature. Much like Usenet, split-file or RAR archives were utilized in order to further enhance the racing culture.

Of course, due to the private and closed nature of this distribution network, it was difficult for many users to gain access to these topsites. Topsites are very much still in existence today.

IRC (90s-Present)

IRC has been around for a long time and has played quite a role in society, both in filesharing as well as politics. Many IRC clients feature a DCC (direct client to client) protocol which allows users to do exactly as the name implies.

Through DCC, and later with advancements and bots known as XDCC servers, filesharing took yet another turn. Distribution groups who were able to get their hands on releases were able to serve files to the masses using these XDCC servers, which were typically hosted anywhere from powerful machines, brute forced Windows NT computers, personal computers, and university computer labs.

XDCC is still quite popular and a quick search through Netsplit.de shows many active channels across many active IRC networks still utilizing XDCC for distribution. Additionally, IRC is still widely used for its original purpose of chat as well as a bootstrap mechanism for filesharing mediums which sprouted later.

Hotline (90s)

For a brief period Hotline was a very popular medium for sharing files. At first, Hotline was very mainstream with many mega corporations participating in the Hotline network. However, it quickly faded away due to many complications, including but not limited to the encrypting of source files on Hotline computers which essentially crippled the company.

Napster (Late 90s)

Napster arguably brought MP3 and filesharing to the masses. There are very few netizens who haven’t used or heard of Napster. The software operated as a peer to peer filesharing network strictly used for music. Napster’s database, however, was centrally located, which eventually helped lead to its shutdown and subsequent demise. However, not before it helped to spread the idea of filesharing, in its entirety, to the masses.

Gnutella, eDonkey2000 and Kazaa (Early 2000)

The centralized nature of Napster gave way to a single point of failure – or single point of shutdown. As such, many gifted developers researched methods to avoid such complications. Gnutella, eDonkey2000, and Kazaa were different implementations which all did quite well in their heyday. While their protocols were all different, they were each very similar in that there was no central server. However, each protocol ended up “failing” as they were rooted in commercial (and corporate) interest – which ended up becoming an attack point.

Gnutella, originally created by the Nullsoft people, was once the most used network thanks to LimeWire. The LimeWire client was sued by the RIAA and shutdown in 2010, which turned Gnutella into a ghost network. The original eDonkey2000 from Jed McCaleb was toppled as well, but clones have kept the eDonkey network alive. The Kazaa team later created Skype, which is a widely used VoIP/IM platform.

DC++ and i2hub

DC++ and i2hub were popular methods of sharing files in closed-networks. Both were highly used within the university and college scene where students would share hub/server addresses with each other in order to share files at very high speeds within the local college networks. The advantages provided within these was that outside agencies and other various third parties could not access the content found within these networks.

However, the RIAA found a way into i2hub and was able to shut it down. DC++ is still in active development today, but is not as common or widespread as it once was.

BitTorrent (2001)

Bram Cohen created BitTorrent, which almost anyone with an Internet connection today has used, knowingly or not. BitTorrent essentially took on all of the greatest properties of its predecessors and packed them all into one, easy to use file sharing platform.

Taking on the concepts of breaking files into multiple chunks (Usenet, Topsites) as well as the decentralized peer-to-peer distribution mechanism (Napster, Gnutella, eDonkey2000, Kazaa), BitTorrent has catapulted into a mainstream filesharing mechanism which is fast, efficient, and difficult to stop.

Early versions of BitTorrent required centralized trackers to operate, but have later become able to utilize trackerless “torrents.”

Increasingly BitTorrent users have grown concerned with their privacy. Indexes such as YouHaveDownloaded.com have been able to maintain logs of every file downloaded by IP, which has raised significant awareness to whether it is safe to download files through BitTorrent. In addition, many ISPs have been known to cap speeds when detecting BitTorrent downloads.

As a result of these privacy concerns millions of BitTorrent users have signed up with Anonymous VPN services to mask their IP-addresses when downloading files

Filelockers and Forums (2000 to Present)

In recent years Megaupload, Rapidshare, Hotfile and other file lockers became quite popular. These file lockers provided the simplest means of filesharing when compared to all of their predecessors. Files are simply uploaded to the file locker, and a URL is provided to the file which is download through HTTP/HTTPS.

Generally, the URLs are shared through forums. Due to the affiliate compensations some cyberlockers offer to file uploaders on a per-file based download count, many files are distributed in split-file or RAR archives much like in the days of topsites and Usenet. This is mainly due to for-profit reasons as opposed to cultural or technical reasons as seen in the scene (topsites) or on Usenet respectively.

However, governments as well as special interest groups including the RIAA and MPAA have targeted file lockers leading to widely publicized lawsuits, including the arrest and destruction of Megaupload and Kim Dotcom.

Final Thoughts

Filesharing has come a long way, and with it, many industries have been born.

While it provides challenges to many of the big media conglomerates, it undoubtedly enriched the lives of many independent creators. Distribution is no longer something for the happy few, which shows as tens of thousands of artists share their work for free online every year.

Filesharing as a technology is good. Let’s make sure it stays around so that we may continue to share our thoughts, ideas, and art in order to better ourselves, our communities, and our earth. Anyone who is against that must obviously dream of world destruction, or at the least, wish for human progress to stop.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

Although the name NSE might not ring a bell with many people, it is the largest usenet provider in Europe and has many high-profile resellers such as Usenext.

Through the court BREIN demanded that the NSE delete all infringing content from its servers, and six weeks ago the Court of Amsterdam sided with the copyright holders.

In an attempt to keep their service operational, NSE asked the Court to put the execution of the verdict on hold while the Usenet provider appealed its case, but this week that request was denied. As a result NSE was forced to shut down its services.

“This means that we are forced to cease our operations with immediate effect,” NSE said in a statement.

Despite the setback the Usenet provider will persist with its appeal, not least because the landmark verdict could have disastrous consequences for other Usenet providers.

“For reasons of principle, News-Service.com will not accept the verdict and has lodged an appeal,” NSE announced.

The verdict of the Amsterdam Court is very similar to the one that decimated BitTorrent site Mininova two years ago. It requires NSE to finding a way to identify and delete all copyrighted files from its servers, which is practically impossible.

Aside from threatening many other Usenet providers, a similar judgement would also mean the end of file-hosting sites such as Megaupload, and other cloud storage services including Dropbox. All these services remove copyrighted files when they are asked to, but policing their own servers proactively may prove to be impossible.

BREIN is nevertheless delighted with the verdict of the court. “It is a breakthrough step to further dismantle the availability of illegal content on Usenet,” director Tim Kuik said previously.

It wouldn’t be a surprise if BREIN now waves this verdict in the face of other Usenet providers, in the hope of shutting them down. Using this same tactic BREIN has already managed to pull hundreds of (small) torrent sites offline in the Netherlands.

TorrentFreak contacted NSE to ask what the decision means for their resellers and whether they have plans to “go abroad” in some shape or form. We will update this article when a response comes in.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The group demanded that the Usenet provider delete all infringing content from its servers, and today the Court of Amsterdam sided with the copyright holders.

In an unprecedented verdict the court ruled that NSE has to remove all copyrighted content within four weeks, or pay 50,000 euros ($68,000) in fines per day. The court states that NSE willingly facilitates copyright infringement through its services.

NSE argued that are simply transmitting content, much like an Internet provider does. However, the court rejected this defense, adding that a notice and takedown procedure is insufficient to protect the rightsholders.

The decision could have far-reaching consequences for many other Internet services, starting with NSE resellers such as Binverse and Usenext..

“We are very disappointed with the Court’s verdict. It is technically as well as economically unfeasible to check the contents of the 15 to 20 million messages that are exchanged on a daily basis. Added to which, there is no automated way of checking whether Usenet messages contain copyrighted material or whether permission has been obtained for the distribution of such material,” NSE CEO Patrick Schreurs said in a comment.

“We see no way of complying with this verdict. Furthermore, the verdict endangers our very existence as a company, and is thus a threat to Usenet itself, as the facilitation of Usenet services has become impossible on the grounds of this verdict. The exchange of messages by means of this oldest of Internet services has de facto become impossible,” he adds.

The Usenet provider is currently considering whether it should appeal the decision.

BREIN is delighted with the verdict of the court, which is very similar to the one that signaled the end of the BitTorrent site Mininova two years ago.

“It is a breakthrough step to further dismantle the availability of illegal content on Usenet,” director Tim Kuik responded.

There is little doubt that the verdict of the Amsterdam Court is going to have a huge impact on the Usenet market, and the question has to be asked where it will stop. Could file-hosting services like MegaUpload and RapidShare be next? And what about other cloud hosting services such as Dropbox?

For now, however, NSE is faced with the impossible task of finding a way to identify and delete all copyrighted files from its servers.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

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: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.