@Home Cuts Newsgroups Due to DMCA Complaints 248
hobb writes: "This is interesting... According to a post to athome.announce, Excite@Home is deciding to pull a bunch of newsgroups due to DMCA violations. Sure, the group names listed suggest possible violations, but it seems quite sudden. I wonder who might be pressuring them... The posting reads [...]" The posting is reproduced below. We don't have access to athome.* newsgroups from the outside world, so if any readers are @Home subscribers, feel free to comment...
Due to violations of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) the Usenet newsgroups listed below are being discontinued from the Excite@Home news feed.
They are being removed from all of the news servers nationally ASAP.
alt.binaries.hustleralt.binaries.playgirl
alt.binaries.penthouse
alt.binaries.movies
alt.binaries.pictures.centerfolds.playboy
alt.binaries.movies.divx
alt.binaries.movies.purity
alt.binaries.movies.shadowrealm
alt.binaries.movies.shadowrealm.repost
alt.binaries.movies.mirage-mrg
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:1)
(I think you may have meant "who's", but I can't be sure
Re:Uh oh (Score:1)
Re:Learn to X-post (Score:1)
Here's why they did it (Score:5)
If you get Web Hosting Magazine [whmag.com], I have an article in the next issue (July) about the DMCA's effects on ISPs and Hosting Services, and how they should handle DMCA complaints.
(No, I can't post a link to the story. It's a *print* magazine, and that issue isn't out yet. Sorry.)
- Robin
Re:1337 NNTP (Score:1)
Franchises outside US (Score:1)
Re:What's napster? (Score:1)
Yeah, that's true.
Of course, I have noticed that alt.binaries.* usually means pr0n spam, something that isn't illegal (well, the "spam" part probably is, but otherwise, no).
=)
I don't subscribe to any of the alt.binaries.* groups because I'm living behind an ISDN link and downloading 99% of pr0n vs. 1% of actual content is frustrating. However, for the short while I read sfnet.tiedostot (the local binary group), I noticed a lot of people posted legitimate stuff (strange pictures, screenshots about situations discussed in other groups, and so on) and some did post illegal (copyrighted) stuff. Like all other file sharing mechanisms, it can be used for both.
Of course, in this case, the very group names themselves say that stuff that goes there is probably illegal...
This is a typical management DUHcision (Score:2)
I mean, DOH!
Re:Learn to X-post (Score:1)
Now I just hope they don't touch the MP3 newsgroups :-)
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Re:It's their servers (Score:1)
In my experience, @Home doesn't seem to miss a lot
of posts, but its retention is lousy.
My solution? I run leafnode (a truly kickass piece of software, btw) and decide my own retention times, per group.
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:1)
They're movie distro groups, or at shadowrealm is. They released their own ms-mp4 codec hack to differentiate themselves from the rest of the DivX scene, the SMR nAVI codec. It's basically the same as DivX only they didn't bother to change M$'s four-cc codes that Gej & crew did. And I'm fairly certain I've seen mirage and purity labelled on some DivX's on IRC at one time or another so they're just other groups vieing for l33t status by trying to put out the best DVD rips and theatre screeners first. Yawn.
Re:Here's why they did it (Score:2)
It calls a few newsgroups 'web addresses', misleading at best.
What I find disturbing is that they will legally be able to pull regular pr0n off (or get the newsgroups shut down) but all the kiddie pr0n still remains (along with the associated newsgroups).
Chris Cothrun
Curator of Chaos
Re:Legality of Usenet Groups (Score:2)
You mean, like the Bible, which generally has a pretty innocuous cover, but is filled with all sorts of incest, adultery, child-killing, even genocide?
From a promising start ("In the beginning was the Word...") it pretty quickly degenerates into all sorts of nastiness.
Indeed, the bible is an excellent example of a book that not only shouldn't be judged by its cover, but must actually be read carefully in order to determine its true contents.
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Re:Legality of Usenet Groups (Score:5)
You must have been viewing them.
Which means you were downloading and looking at kiddie porn.
Which is illegal.
Catch-22.
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blocking newsgroups flawed (Score:5)
Newsgroups are not like organizations that can be shutdown. They are not meeting spot that can be closed. A newsgroup is a higher level classification of subject than the normal subject line. That is it.
So "blocking a newsgroup" shouldn't be thought of as "shutting a newsgroup down", but rather removing a classification people can identify messages as. Making it so people can't indicate their post of "dog.jpg" is illegal bestiality by posting it to "alt.binaries.pictures.bestiality" means people looking for dog pictures for school in "alt.binaries.pictures" will end up downloading it.
So what does @homes latest actions do? It makes it so people who want to respect copyright laws won't know that a picture from "alt.binaries.erotic.pictures" violates Hustler's copyright. So now porn websites that get their content from the usenet are more likely to accidentally violate Hustler's copyright!
Ben
Strange priorities (Score:2)
Copyright makes for some strange bedfellows, no pun intended. It's okay by @Home management to facilitate the distribution of pictures of four-year-olds being raped, but you can't get pirated copies of Photoshop from their news servers. That sounds really backwards to me.
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Out of the frying pan, and into the fire. (Score:5)
Go ahead, and let @Home fold like a cheap camera a few more times, bending over backwards and taking it up the ass from MPAA and RIAA. Then, someone's gonna defame someone else on their newsgroup, and @Home will get sued. They'll certainly try to claim that some act that was passed a few years ago (the name escapes me) exempted ISPs from liability for published content. But I think that by instead excersizing editorial control a succesful argument can be made that @Home has assumed the role of a publisher, like Prodigy did. They can't have it both ways: claim that they're an ISP, a passive conduct, and cannot be liable for content carried on their service, but then turn around and excersize editorial control over the same content.
It's just a matter of time before they get nailed on this.
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Re:Avalible NGs (as I see them) (Score:2)
Its just news. Shaw's DNS should resolve your server for you:
ping news
alternatively try: 24.2.10.79
Avalible NGs (as I see them) (Score:3)
All the above NG's are currently visible to me with the exception of
alt.binaries.hustler
It does not exist in my avalible list of groups. While this does not impact my personal life much (my favored NG would be alt.2600, not the p0rn binaries ones)Neverthless, I don't like it...
Of course now I must wonder if I should thank
Re:A step in the right direction (Score:2)
Performance increase due to nearby caching.
I wonder why ISPs don't run stuff like Squid [squid-cache.org], since last I heard, the WWW was a fairly popular part of the Internet.
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Re:what the hell does that have to with the DMCA? (Score:5)
DMCA has a lot more in it than the hideous 1201(a). One of the things that it covers is liability for middlemen, it kinda replaces the old-style "common carrier" rules that used to apply to ISPs. It mostly makes sense from a someone-must-be-accountable point of view, but is a bit unpleasant because it has some guilty-until-proven-innocent thinking in it.
Basically (I'm kinda summarizing and talking out of my ass at the same time, you might want to actually look it up), if you think someone is violating your copyright, and there's some kind of server being use by the offender (in this case, NNTP servers, in other cases, it might be web servers, etc), then instead of going after the actual copyright violator, you can go after the server. Once the copyright owner tells the server owner that a violation is taking place, the server owner has to shut down the content, whether or not the act of copyright violation has actually been verified. If they don't act after being notified of the infringement, then they become liable.
Then once the alleged violator realizes that their web page has been taken down, their usenet post cancelled, etc, they can write to the server owner and say, "No, it ain't copyright violation" and then the server can start serving the content again, but now the alleged violator's ass is on the line. (Presumably, this cannot be done anonymously. The idea is that it should always be clear exactly what party is to blame, should it turn out to be actual infringement.)
Probably what happened in this case is that some porno magazine threated the ISP so the ISP pulled those groups. It's not so much a "DMCA violation" as a regular old-fashioned copyright violation, combined with a DMCA "process."
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Re:Should I be worried? (Score:2)
Also, most news servers archive the newsgroups for longer than ISPs, or so I've noticed..
Re:1337 NNTP (Score:2)
WTF is that?
Re:I'd cut those newsgroups just to save (Score:2)
I do not think that means what you think it means. (Score:2)
Don't you think that is a tad perjorative?
Why not say "piracy"?
Why not say "pillage, rape, and plunder"?
Have you not been keeping up with the debate over property ownership vs. information ownership?
Been living in a cave for the past 20 years?
Like it or not, this IS an issue that is important to many Slashdot readers, no matter what side of the fence you are when it comes to copyright law.
Re:Learn to X-post (Score:5)
After many hours of careful research I can say that, yes, most of the posts to alt.binaries.* are pr0n-spam.
It was nasty work, but someone had to do it. I'm about to launch my newsreader now, to see whether the situation has changed since last night.
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Hmm. (Score:2)
We all know that usenet will just adapt and use a different group anyway.
Re:@home getting worse and worse (Score:2)
As for the IRC server, If you look at the efnet news page (www.efnet.org I think) it was pulled due to continuous DOS attacks against it, I believe (might be wrong).
As it was run 'for fun' and not as a serious offering (you won't find it in your contract anywhere as a service they provide) you can't really whine... legally...
But, of course, as a customer, you can and shoudl take your business elsewhere if @Home no longer provides the service you want.
Personally, if they pulled their whole usenet feed, hypothetically, what would you do? Do your other providers provide the groups yout want? or would you just go to newsfeeds.com and get an account? (I wouldn't, they recently, even though you are allowed 1gb per server per day, changed the deal so you can only connect to one at a a time... I want my years subscription back now.)
Re:What If We Agree? (Score:2)
This is not racism, this is not some big conspiracy. A better analogy might be:
You know find out your tennants are not actually living in the house, but have a huge meth lab and pot farm in it. You are within your rights to immediately evict them (and call the police, of course).
If this was just a newsgroup with a name, and it was being pulled by name only, that'd be different.. but it's OBVIOUS and EASY to VERIFY what is in these groups.. copyrighted material belonging to these corporations.
And again, let's remember that this won't stop people from posting these thinsg to usenet.. they'll just use a different group.
Re:Avalible NGs (as I see them) (Score:2)
Re:Shadowrealm? (Score:2)
Re:No more easy access to movie previews. (Score:2)
Although it annoysme too... (I'll have to listen to my friends grumbl. yeah, that's it), I definitely think they have every right.
Er, they missed a hol bunch.. (Score:3)
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:2)
Even though this is over 200 years ago the constitutional loophole would still appear to exist.
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:3)
Dangerous manouver (Score:2)
Re:what the hell does that have to with the DMCA? (Score:2)
1337 NNTP (Score:4)
alt.binaries.hu5t13r
alt.binaries.p14yg1rl
alt.binaries.p3nth0use
alt.binaries.m0v13s
alt.binaries.pictures.centerfolds.pl4ydUUd3
alt.binaries.movies.d.i.v.x
alt.binaries.movies.pur1ty
alt.binaries.movies.sh4d0wr3alm
alt.binaries.movies.m1r4g3-mrg
alt.computers.theyll.be.suprised.to.find.it.here
The problem is that if you whack UseNet stuff where you *expect* to see it, it starts popping up where you don't expect to see it. I agree that UseNet has become a forum for sharing pR0n. Perhaps if it was a text only forum, cull MIME, UUencode and anything else that looks like it might be a binary attachment. Cull RTF and HTML formatted posts as well. Hell, at least it'd be easier to spool and read.
Does this mean if I trademark a word, I can ban its use in any online medium?
Xix.
Re:Can still get them in OC as of now (Score:2)
Cox [lvcm.com] outsources to Supernews for its Usenet service. Yes, it's pretty decent...retention in alt.binaries.sounds.mp3, for instance, currently has 64175 articles going back 2.3 days [supernews.com] (I've seen it higher before, but alt.binaries.sounds.mp3 is one of the highest-volume newsgroups, if not the highest). Before I signed up for cable-modem service, I used Supernews with a cheap dial-up ISP to bypass their crappy news server.
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:3)
> There is always a copyright. Always.
The original poster is correct. Up until the mid '70s, published works were required to have a copyright notice on them, or they weren't copyright. Two infamous examples of works not being copyright were Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and the early Star Trek episodes.
Martin Luther King's speech was the subject of a long battle by his family. It was apparently determined that, because copies of the text were originally distributed without a copyright notice, it was not copyright.
I don't know if the Star Trek episodes were actually the subject of a court case, but the lack of copyright on the early episodes meant that fans could scam off of thos early episodes without any fear of prosecution. This may be part of the reason for the longevity (and popularity) of the original Startrek.
(Apparently, someone at Paramount didn't think that Star Trek was going to 'fly' and so they didn't worry about putting a copyright on the early episodes. I'm sure that somebody got the cat 'O Nine Tails treatment over that omission many years later. Fans, on the other hand, are eternally grateful (or at least for the next 100 years or so).)
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Re:Here's why they did it (Score:2)
This boggles me. I'd thought that the DMCA requires specific examples, or at least that's how most cases have gone so far. Mandating "remove all files that look like this" seems a bit vague, and sorta scary if upheld.
DMCA rulings worry me because they really seem like carpet-bombing. The judge decides that it's okay that there's some collateral damage.
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Re:What If We Agree? (Score:2)
Furthermore, upon deeper examination, this case is almost the complete opposite-- these actions won't have any effect on the white hats or the black hats. The legitimate activity won't be hurt because they can just be moved to another channel, but also similarly for the illegitimate transfers.
So in my book, it's doubly bad. The intent is horrible, and the outcome doesn't at all match the intent.
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Re:Sigh. (Score:2)
My point is... that the argument that these actions are legitimate is correct-- to an extent (so it's a bit seductive). If this sort of action becomes institutionalized, then it's a problem. @Home is NOT someone who's renting out a spare bedroom.
And with regard to religion, race, sex,... these sorts of rulings begin to establish a legal pattern that it's acceptable to be put a whole group of people out just because some of the people that hang out near them(logical proximity, as in similar skin color, sex,...) do illegal things. I don't believe this sort of collateral damage is acceptable on a widespread basis.
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Re:What If We Agree? (Score:2)
The point is that an individual shouldn't be judged by what a group does, whether or not the perceptions about a group are correct. You'll never see 200 people being the defendant in a suit; their guilt or innocence is determined individually.
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Re:What If We Agree? (Score:4)
Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
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Re:Should I be worried? (Score:2)
Re:No more easy access to movie previews. (Score:2)
Actually, there's a cheat in Windoze Explorer. Select the .AVI file, then right-click on File -> Properties. Click on "Preview" tab. You can view most partial .AVIs this way, as long as you have the first part of the file.
Pity that Windoze Media Player is too braindead to do the same thing. ("Streaming? Sure, we do streaming. We just don't play incomplete stuff you've downloaded!")
Re:No more easy access to movie previews. (Score:2)
Works for me on Win98SE and Windows Media Player 6.4.somethingorother and the related DLLs. I'll upgrade to 7 or higher shortly after hell freezes over.
Most of the results in Google for "AVI preview incomplete" or "partial AVI preview" are one-message threads from people saying "crap, it doesn't work!", or worse, "it used to work but now it's broken".
Perhaps this is another "feature" the boys in Redmond decided was too useful to permit its continued existence :(
This looks promising, though:
This [google.com] link says that it's disabled in Win2K Pro, but to re-enable it, you go to:
WinExplorer -> Tools -> Folder_Options -> General tab -> "Enable Web Content in Folders".
(WTF this has to do with it, I don't know, but I'm not running Win2000. It works fine with web content in folders *dis*abled in Win98SE. As always, YMMV.)
Meanwhile, let's hear it for the pr0n-hounds and Google, without whom I'd have never found out about this cheat, and without whom I'd also have never found this potential workaround for Win2K.
Re:No more easy access to movie previews. (Score:2)
Have you tried running mplayer.exe on your box?
I just tried it on my 98SE box from the suggestion in this post [google.com], based on the fact that I'm running basically the same system this guy was, but I *do* have the Preview tab.
So it looks like whatever makes the Preview tab go away has nothing to do with my setup or yours, but that the old "mplayer.exe" Media Player, if it exists on your system, will play incomplete AVIs without worrying about all the mucking about with Explorer. Just invoke mplayer.exe from the command line, and drag-and-drop the .AVI onto it.
(Looks like Windows Media Player 6.4 is MPLAYER2.EXE, and the MPLAYER.EXE that the poster is talking about is the old one that came with Win98. On my system, it doesn't even have a version number on Help->About. Far out.)
Reminds me of the time I had to use WINFILE.EXE (Yes, the Windows 3.1 file manager was still included at least as recently as Win98SE, is it still there on Win2000?) to change a file association because my "Open With..." menu option wouldn't come up for some obscure reason. (For historical reference, yeah, that's WINFILE.EXE -> File -> Associate. Far out, it still works. Of course, that tells you just how old the codebase for Win9x really is...)
And yes, it is crap like this that's made me not bother with 2K, and I'll skip XP too. After five years of cheating my way around the OS, I'm sick of it. My next OS upgrade doesn't come from Redmond.
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:3)
Huh? I think we're in partial agreement, but there are some entries that confuse me.
Most of the newsgroups have copyrighted content: Hustler, Playgirl and Penthouse are copyrighted publications.
I'm damned if I know what's going on in .shadowrealm, .mirage-mrg, or .purity. I have no idea what these are for, so I won't comment.
But .divx and .movies strike me as odd. The fact that someone's encoding stuff with DivX ;-) does not imply a copyright violation. Nor does the fact that someone's posting a "movie". (Whatever happened to alt.binaries.multimedia?)
Basically, my position here is the same as with the .mp3 hierarchy:
absmp3.beatles - removable under DMCA. The owners of the Beatles' music have requested that the music not be swapped via USENET. absmp3.1960s - not removable under DMCA. Just because it was made in the 60s, doesn't mean it was copyrighted. abs.mp3 - not removable under DMCA. Just because it's an MP3 doesn't mean it's copyrighted. (Likewise, just because it's a DivX stream doesn't mean it's copyrighted.)
Personally, I see this as a potentially-good thing at least as far as the MP3 front goes -- a full USENET feed is over 250GB per day, and can saturate an OC-3. Retention at my server seems to be holding up, but propagation is slowly falling apart as transit servers drop articles on the floor. If we can cut down on the volume of 600M files being tossed around, many of which are being posted from @home users, USENET can continue to function for a little while (6-12 months) longer.
IMHO the short-term solution to binary-USENET's "a full feed is too much to manage" problem isn't to drop groups, it's for broadband providers to impose upload caps of 100-200M per day at their own NNTP server on their users. Large files would still be postable - it'd just take a little longer, and retention and propagation could improve immeasurably for everyone else.
But on purely-DMCA grounds, it looks like @home has the right idea on some groups, the wrong idea on others, and may just be confused on a few more.
Re:Uh oh (Score:5)
Problem is, that's still a helluvalotta traffic for your ISP.
Full feed - 250GB per day. Let's assume you have 10000 users downloading 100M per day out of it. That 250G transit gives your users 1 TB (1 million megabytes) of downloads in the aggregate - but the 1TB of traffic is all on your LAN, so you don't have to pay (or otherwise make nicey-nicey with your Tier-1 pier ;-) for it. You eat 250G of transit costs to grab it to your disk farm and serve it locally.
But instead the PHBs tell you to dump your USENET server. Now you've got 10000 users subscribing to a premium USENET service to slurp down the binaries. The whole damn terabyte now comes from outside your network and onto your users' drives. You pay four times as much for transit as you used to in the USENET days.
For some things (MP3s of obscure bands), it may not matter -- you won't typically have all 10000 users downloading the same stuff.
For other things (e.g., this October, when Star Wars gets DivX'ed ;-), it may make a lot of difference - everyone is gonna be after the same 600M binary, so wouldn't you rather pay the transit for it once, rather than for every user who grabs a copy?
The picture makes a lot more sense if you stop thinking of the binary part of USENET as "USENET" and start thinking of it as a very large caching server.
Prediction: Imminent death of USENET predicted within 24 hours of the release of "Star Wars". Film at... er, part of film at October, with reposts of other parts of film through November, December, and probably most of 2002.
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:2)
Not that I know it myself I overheard it from another cubical.
The one they missed (Score:3)
Mark Duell
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:3)
Mark Duell
Re:What If We Agree? (Score:2)
Sure they do.
If the long-term benefits to the society outweigh the short-term benefit to you, then society has a perfect "right" to crush your so-called rights like a bug. And it generally does.
Of course, it usually takes a while for "society" to figure out what is in its long-term benefit (read: large scale arguments, protests, riots, etc). Once it has settled on a meme (racial discrimination is bad, for instance), your "rights" don't mean diddly-squat.
Oh-Oh-Oops! (Score:2)
And if you didn't get out there and vote -- preferably libertarian or green -- this is partially your fault. I hope you can look your grandchildren in the eye when they ask you where all the freedom went.
Re:Soon to be added... (Score:2)
Re:No more easy access to movie previews. (Score:2)
http://www.divx-digest.com/software/divfix.html
it rebuilds the table (note that the file will NOT BE THE EXACT SAME AS THE ORIGINAL AFTER BUILDING SO RESUMES WILL _NOT_ WORK, my advice is to copy it to another directory and fix it, that way you have an original copy.)
Shadowrealm? (Score:2)
-- fencepost
As an @Home customer... (Score:2)
Re:Out of the frying pan, and into the fire. (Score:3)
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:2)
Very observant. Anyone who thinks this action is somehow illegal or unwarranted should read our trademark laws. The names of the groups alone violate those laws. By law a company must defend their trademark against all infringement. If a company is lax in defending their trademark another entity may take that trademark over by arguing that it has been abandoned. At least that's my understanding. I dunno if copyrights have the same requirement or not. But even if they do not, the owner of the copyright has every right to sue someone who violates their copyright. I know this means they should go after the individual violator, but that would take effort, so they hit the distributor as a way of cutting off supply.
Consider this alternative.. (Score:3)
1) The alt.* newsgroups are maintained in a hierarchy where the front elements of the hierarchy categorize what you expect to find in the lower parts.
2) The alt.binaries.* hierarchy indicates files that have been encoded in such a manner that they are converted from high-ascii to plaintext while retaining their original data.
Given 1) and 2), we can ascertain that any posting in the alt.binaries.* newsgroups will be of some form of data (read: not discussion) nature. The only exception to this are alt.binaries.*.d newsgroups.
3) @ Home has banned a subset of alt.binaries.* newsgroups, none of which are alt.binaries.*.d
4) Of the newsgroups banned, they are all either geared towards copyrighted magazines, or deal with groups that distribute copyrighted media.
Given 1, 2, 3, 4, we can now conclude that these newsgroups were set up to SOLELY facilitate the distribution of these copyrighted items. (Again, no alt.binaries.*.d group was removed).
Where exactly is the counter-argument? How can you defend yourself against this? Your rights are not at stake when you consider points 1), 2), 3), and 4). Arguing that these groups serve a legitimate purpose is like arguing a booth on a street corner selling pirated CD's is a boon to the community because they sell matches as well.
Re:you the bad guy! (Score:2)
You're right, nobody can force you to be a responsible citizen on usenet, and in general the people who have always been jerks will continue to be jerks. Funny how those here whine constantly about how we greed and irresponsibility is bad, as long as we're talking about someone else. When not being greedy impinges on your rights, though, there's an instant uproar.
Re:What If We Agree? (Score:2)
Re:Soon to be added... (Score:2)
Re:What If We Agree? (Score:2)
Even funnier is when idiots like you spout off about 'welfare mothers' implying that the mothers are black. In NY, 65% are white, 15% hispanic and 20% black.
DMCA is just an excuse (Score:2)
The DMCA is a lot nicer get out than saying "Sorry, the service you signed up for is costing us too much were taking some of it away". Telstra in Oz did this and there users are not happy. This way @home gets to say "hey, it's not us who passed the law".
I guess some of the other high bandwidth groups will be hit next. I wonder what knock on effects this could have on commercial news providors though? I though news was regarded as distributed anyway and hence news was treated just like the postal service or a telephone carrier.
Re:Consider this alternative.. (Score:2)
4) Of the newsgroups banned, they are all either geared towards copyrighted magazines, or deal with groups that distribute copyrighted media.
alt.binaries.movies is not geared towards a copyrighted magazine or a pirate group. While certainly some copyright material does pass through it, this alone does not make it a 'bad' group. After all, any newsgroup could have copyrighted material posted to it at any time. Given the growing popularity of amateur produced movies, this (and it's subsets) would be the appropriate place to post them. So it does have legitimate non-copyright infringing purposes.
Can @Home do this? Sure. It's their service and they can set the terms. What I think everyone's complaining about is the broad brush manner that @home has dealt with it. The DMCA is a bad law, and this is just one of its consequences.
It's ok!! (Score:3)
Re:Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:2)
A quick count shows that only 4 of the 10 newsgroups listed would've had a potential trademark conflict. The other 6 were either completely generic (alt.binaries.movies), named after a standard multimedia fileformat (alt.binaries.movies.divx; I'm sure the DivX people don't object to people using their name to describe files that are, in fact, encoded in DivX), or named after a pirate group that releases movies (all the ones toward the bottom of the list; I'm basing this last one on another Slashdot post and not first-hand knowledge). Besides, I don't see anyone going after, say, the comp.os.ms-windows.* hierarchy or the comp.sys.ibm.* hierarchy. Overall, I suspect that group content played a much, much larger role than any trademarks issues with the name.
Re:Legality of Usenet Groups (Score:3)
Whose the "bad guy"? (Score:5)
Technically, blocking those isn't censorship. It's simply following the law.
For the flamers out there (!gay "flamers) who think that so and so, or this and that need to "make a stand against the DMCA!!" Think about this...
A company, or individual who flaunts the law has a harder time enforcing their rights BY LAW. It's been proven. It goes something like this: if these guys had said "screw that, were not going to block it, despite the legalities of it" they may, or may not have had to go to court to defend their right. But, when/if they DID have to go to court for something else, their not wanting to follow along with the law's intent would show.
And, if by going to court, they were FORCED to pull those groups, that would set a legal precedent for EVERY ISP across the nation, and they would be forced to pull them too. It is seldom that a recent ruling is set aside for an individual.
If you want to fight the DMCA, or this, write your congressmen. Don't sit there and lament when this happens. It's not their fault, it's the fault of the American Voter, period. Use your rights. Don't expect a company to fight YOUR good fight.
krystal_blade "I want my karma back!"
Re:Shadowrealm? (Score:2)
Re:Soon to be banned... (Score:5)
I'd cut those newsgroups just to save (Score:2)
I knew it (Score:2)
When there is only 1 or 2 broadband providers in a market, and you convince or threaten them into blocking Napster, Gnutella, etc., the game is over.
Sure you can go back to 56k dialup, but that pretty much eliminated movie sharing and makes MP3 unbearably slow.
Are there any ISP's that won't knuckle under?
Re:wrong direction alltogether (Score:2)
No.. and that's just it. I don't want one provider of e-mail, or news. I want hundreds. And I don't want to live in a world where the assumption is the guys who provide your bandwidth are the ones who provide your services.
Also, I can't say that I mind it when people use bandwidth to exchange media. Far be it from me to decide what is worth while and what is not. But, I sure as heck don't want to pay for servers (news servers, in this case) if I'm not a part of it.
A step in the right direction (Score:3)
I've thought for a long time ISPs have no business providing add-on services like usenet, e-mail, or website hosting. There are dozens, if not hundreds of alternative places to find those services.
All I want out of my ISP is to give me a connection. It pains me when I think of how much of my monthly fee is paying for those resources at my ISP that I never use. 5 free e-mail addresses? I'll have a new ISP in 12 months...I'll stick with the emails I've had for the last seven years. Free 'personal' webpage? I'll go to geocities or at least pay a few bucks. Usenet? I'm sure there are plenty of services out there.
My point is, what business does the ISP have in providing news service anyways? I'm just pissed that @home is doing it because Industry nazis are on their back, instead of doing it because it's not really their job.
Legality of Usenet Groups (Score:4)
Funny thing is, I see some of the newsgroups we blocked in 95 are available on the @home news server. Havent looked to see if there is anything there..but..shudder..Yeck.
Cool... (Score:2)
Re:what the hell does that have to with the DMCA? (Score:2)
It's not violating copyrights, but rather breaking systems to protect copyrights.
Should I be worried? (Score:3)
Liability of ISP as a Relay Service (Score:2)
So why is this such a big deal now? The cable ISP has absolutely no responsibility for what someone else posts, whether or not they impose some sort of editorial actions on their own users or not. In fact, those "editorial actions" everyone is referring to are not true editorial actions. Yes, @Home can pick and choose which newsgroups they want to host and which ones they don't. Now, if an ISP's users detest to choices made, then the ISP better recognize that or they will loose users. This is one of the foundations of our economy. An ISP should have set policies for handling this type of situation. @Home has such a policy. Its users are prohibited from illegal activity according to the @Home AUP. Why is @Home getting so much criticism for following their policies?
And, if I recall correctly, the DMCA was more for "circumvention devices" and other infringement techniques. Relaying messages posted by other people on USENET is not an infringement technique, it is common courtesy provided it is within the charter (if there is one) of the newsgroup.
An ISP should not be responsible for content posted that is beyond their control. An ISP should, at most, be responsible for the actions of their own users, not of users from other ISPs. There is already a hierarchy of responsibility within the law, and there has always been such a hierarchy amongst our society. The hierarchy worked fine then, and it is certainly the correct approach now. It may not work well given the lightning fast technologies we have today, but sometimes a goverment must make sacrifices for the private sector. Certainly, the private sector should sacrifice for the government, unless the leading body of the government requests it (in the USA, that would be the people).
The majority of people I know who understand it are against the DMCA. Some of congress is against it, too. Why are we sitting here dead in the water? We have plenty of feul; start the fucking engine already. If you're going to complain, the least you could do is complain to the right people and actually do something.
This is an illegal action! (Score:2)
No surprises here (Score:2)
My prediction: in 6 months, there will be a
Re:Uh oh (Score:2)
Nah...I had Episode I within a couple months of its release to theaters. Remember, some theaters showed it in digital format. Granted, the encoding wasn't nearly as good as Divx, but it was passable and USENET didn't die then.
They can't really look at it as a bandwidth issue because they can't justify opening themselves up to legal liability just to save on bandwidth costs. What is more likely to happen is that if/when peering bandwidth utilization starts going up they will start tracking users use habits and start booting users who they categorize as "abusing" the system by making excessive use of bandwidth.
Re:Uh oh (Score:2)
Nah. Just read your T&Cs, and you'll see a clause in there about using the service in such a way that it adversely affects the availability of the service for other subscribers. They usually use this clause to prevent folks from running http/ftp/irc, etc servers and hogging the badwidth. All they'll do is claim that your utilizing that much bandwidth causes a performance issue for other users on the network and then boot you off. Or more likely, that you and the 150 other subscribers who use that much bandwidth are adversely affecting the 10,000 subscribers who aren't.
Re:No more easy access to movie previews. (Score:2)
Learn to X-post (Score:3)
Or so I've been told.
Dancin Santa
Sigh. (Score:4)
Oh please spare me this... (Score:2)
If you want to read hustler, (and I can imagine that for plenty of slashdotters this will be their only source of releif, ESR's tips notwithstanding) go the fuck out to the fucking shop and BUY a fucking copy. DONT expect me to think of you as a latter-day Nelson Mandela simply because you STOLE it via @home.
For FUCK'S SAKE, PLEASE STOP POSTING THESE BOGUS STORIES TO SLASHDOT. MOST OF US ARE LAW-ABIDING CITIZENS. WE DO NOT WANT TO KNOW ABOUT PORN, OR WAREZ, OR ANYTHING ELSE LIKE THAT. NOW, HOW ABOUT SOME STORIES FOR NERDS. SURELY THERE MUST BE A NEW POINT RELEASE OF G++ COMING SOON ????
Re:I do not think that means what you think it mea (Score:2)
Well I DONT like it. I am sick of whinging white middle class so-called 'nerds' crying whenever their inalienable rights to free porn and warez are called into question, while meanwhile elsewhere [microsoft.com] there are serious problems in the world.
Slashdots moronic readership should take time out away from their computers and find out what is going on in the real world
Re:Louis Armstrong, Jazz Pioneer, dead at 71 (Score:2)
John Lee Hooker, yes, he died recently, but...
Hell, the goate.cx posts make more sense than these.
Re:1337 NNTP (Score:2)
Perhaps if it was a text only forum, cull MIME, UUencode and anything else that looks like it might be a binary attachment. Cull RTF and HTML formatted posts as well. Hell, at least it'd be easier to spool and read
You're thinking of Usenet II [usenet2.org]. Finding a feed can be difficult, though.
Re:Consider this alternative.. (Score:2)
This is only true if you look at the groups from a distance. The *alt newsgroups are completely controlled by usenet users and their heirarchy is ungoverned. Although many of the groups do follow such a scheme, it is neither required nor neccessarily followed.
2) The alt.binaries.* hierarchy indicates files that have been encoded in such a manner that they are converted from high-ascii to plaintext while retaining their original data.
It is certainly true that most, but not all, of the groups under alt.binaries are used for mime-encoded messages. It is also true that many groups outside of alt.binaries carry a substantial amount of binary traffic. From a free speech or copyright perspective the position of a group within a more-or-less anarchy controlled hierarchy cannot have conclusive effect.
3) @ Home has banned a subset of alt.binaries.* newsgroups, none of which are alt.binaries.*.d
No, what they did was remove access to a few very specific groups. Your argument based on naming schemes is misplaced.
4) Of the newsgroups banned, they are all either geared towards copyrighted magazines, or deal with groups that distribute copyrighted media.
I'll grant that these particular news groups probably do deal primarily though not exclusively with those topics.
Given 1, 2, 3, 4, we can now conclude that these newsgroups were set up to SOLELY facilitate the distribution of these copyrighted items. (Again, no alt.binaries.*.d group was removed).
We cannot conclude anything from 1,2,3,and 4. I would agree, however, that it is probably a good guess that these groups were "set up" PRIMARILY to facilitate the distribution of certain copyrighted items. However, because the *alt groups are not governed or controlled, the purpose for which a groups was first set up is irrelevant to a discussion about copyright or free speech issues. Only the purpose for which they are actually being used matters.
Furthermore, it is not neccessarily illegal or a violation of copyright to transmit or share copyrighted materials. There are many lawful purposes behind such conduct. Critique and parady are just two of several fair uses of copyrighted material.
Your argument assumes that all activity on a group is illegal based on the name of the group. No court in this country would agree with you. If, on the other hand, specific allegations of infringment were brought into court, the poster of such material could be held liable. The group would not be liable and neither would any ISP who carries the group.
Soon to be banned... (Score:5)
alt.binaries.first_ammendment
alt.binaries.second_ammendment
alt.binaries.fourth_ammendment
....
Re:Legality of Usenet Groups (Score:2)
Re:1337 NNTP (Score:3)
That''s a regional newsgroup. You'll also notice groups starting with fi,se,dk,de, etc. But to answer your question: no.community.health.disabilities.misc
Re:It's their servers (Score:2)
Of course, anyone who has a cablemodem should not be using their cablemodem provider's USENET servers...they are of poor quality. An account with a commercial news provider is well worth the price asked, especially if the user does not want alt.binaries access and actually wants to participate in discussions, instead of just using USENET to download porn and warez.