RIAA claims victory in Usenet.com copyright case A US district judge has ruled in favour of the Recording Industry Ass. of America (RIAA) in the copyright case brought against Usenet.com that kicked off in autumn 2007. “We’re pleased that the court recognised not just that Usenet.com directly infringed the record companies’ copyrights but also took action against the …
Some ancient BBS from the 80s, what a victory!
Great, RIAA, what next - you'll subpoena a TRS-80? With the world moving to encrypted peer-to-peer darknet technologies, anonymised networking, etc etc what a waste of time. Way to go.
Also on the hit-list, gopher and tftp...
In October 2007 RIAA lawyers chucked a federal lawsuit at Usenet.com, in which it claimed that the Fargo, North Dakota newsgroup service “enables and encourages” people to swap copyrighted music.
The internet enables people to swap music. I can just see it now, RIAA files federal lawsuit against the internet.
... as he raises his sword, "I have the power". And the RIAA has the power too because they have the money gotten from the vast sales to law abiding people who actually purchase the grossly overpriced product.
You want to squash the RIAA? Deny them funding by not buying the product. Hmmm, that wont work will it? The only people who want the RIAA stopped are those who steal the music and they don't provide money. Wow, that's a dead end for sure.
The 'and' is important there. Presumably they're arguing that they enable (with the hosting service) and encourage (by, say, having a user interface which makes it super-easy to grab music, and having big banners saying, "COME DOWNLOADS TEH ALBUMZ").
If the only argument is that the files are *available*, and not that they explicitly promoted the fact that there were copyrighted files, it's a very dangerous precedent.
If, however, their marketing specifically mentioned .mp3 newsgroups and said, "Hey, you can get free Michael Jackson songs here", then it's par for the course.
Despite the ignorance of Steve Kay, Usenet is still of use to many people.
Unfortunately now, given this nonsensical ruling (how is Usenet supposed to deal with any illegal copying?) coupled with the excuse used by certain providers that "Usenet is used for distributing kiddie porn, so we're not going to carry any Usenet groups", it looks like it's going to be wiped out :-(
I saw a PC World advert the other night which said that their core2 dual-core systems enabled you to rip CDs even faster to load them onto your ipod.
I seem to think that is actually illegal in the UK.
Easy target for the RIAA I would think. I have a mind to complain just to make a point.
oh well there goes the neighbourhood. It'll take a while tho. We've all seen our faithful usenet slowly but surely being advertised on torrent sites so this was bound to happen.
SSL over NNTP is a wonderful thing. No sharing going on just encrypted goodness. No Mr BPI you cannot see what i am downloading an nor can you Mr ISP. Mind you not long to go until the fact you are on a secure connection to a known usenet host will result in a raid and your PC impounded and those of all your friends and knows associates. We must protect copyright at all costs.
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