Movie Industry Files Injunction Against UK ISP 165
daedae writes "The Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents studios including Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney, have filed suit in the UK against BT, Britain's largest ISP. The studios are asking for an injunction which would force BT to block access to Newzbin, on the grounds of massive losses to Usenet piracy."
Hehe, so much for cooperating (Score:4, Informative)
Awh, poor BT, after taking it up the ass for the content owners, they get it shoved up there again!
Remember that when dealing with the content industry, if you give them a finger, they bite of your head.
Once this motion passed, other motions will be easier and easier until the entire internet consist only of sites the content industry approves off. And politicians who are used to compromises let it all happen because they think the content industry will meet them half way. The problem with meeting someone half way is that if it is you who keeps doing this, sooner or later you are completely on the other side.
For those who can read dutch, read it and weep: http://tweakers.net/nieuws/75349/overheid-hollywood-staat-achter-onze-auteursrechtplannen.html [tweakers.net]
For those who can't read dutch: You poor wretch of a not quite human being. How can you face the dark void that is your miserable life each day?
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off!
Re:Hehe, so much for cooperating (Score:5, Funny)
For those who can't read dutch: You poor wretch of a not quite human being. How can you face the dark void that is your miserable life each day?
Dutch, a language with less native speakers than other great winners like Tagalog or Hausa.
But don't worry, it's still almost five times more useful than Mandingo. :)
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Interesting trivia: The Ewoks speak nonsense Tagalog. One of my coworkers was telling me about the first time she watched that movie while still living in the Philippines, and she actually knew what they said, though it was meaningless.
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The obvious solution is for everyone to learn Chinese.
Re:Hehe, so much for cooperating (Score:5, Insightful)
Just as bad is the fact that they want to use Cleanfeed, the system that silently and transparently blocks child porn sites. Talk about a slippery slope. We were assured that this system would not be abused for commercial reasons, it was purely for blocking the worst examples of child abuse.
BT has a history of screwing its customers. They throttle iPlayer and YouTube so you can't watch the high quality streams in the evenings, and heavily retard (or "manage" as they prefer) P2P traffic. They have data unlimits* too. They also conducted secret Phorm trials and somehow got away without anyone going to jail. Oh, and according to Ofcom their "up to 20Mb" service gets an average of about 7Mb.
* In ISP land "unlimited" now means the same thing as "limited", the only possible difference being that with unlimited sometimes the actual figure is a secret (e.g. Virgin's is 350GB/month but they don't publish it). I suppose it is a bit like flammable and inflammable. Therefore I am coining a new word: unlimit. It means the same thing as limit.
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There are two limits on Virgin, the daytime and evening STM limits where they throttle your connection down to below 20% normal speed, and the hidden 350GB monthly limit. If you pass the monthly limit they send you a nasty letter informing you that you are using their unlimited service too much and please try to stay within the unlimit in future.
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Oh, so you're on BE now then ? :p
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The original sin was to invent copyright in the first place. If you grand some rights to anybody or any entity, you can't expect that entity to compromise on it: they'll want it enforced, no matter what, because the moment you granted them that right, you've always sold the farm. All WE can do, is to heat up the pressure on the politicians to limit copyright again. But I highly dou
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The original sin was to invent copyright in the first place. If you grand some rights to anybody or any entity, you can't expect that entity to compromise on it:
There's nothing absolute about copyright any more than any other human right. It's all a question of what society agrees amongst itself is a good idea. So there is absolutely no reason not to hav reasonable copyright laws.
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The original sin was to invent copyright in the first place.
The concept of copyright in itself is not such a bad thing. Firstly it is the cornerstone on top of which the GPL and a large amount of open source software is built:
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/pirate-party.html [gnu.org]
Without copyright a company could take open source software and utterly violate the GPL without the original author having any remedy what so ever.
Secondly, there are many of us who rely on producing content protected by copyright in order to put food in our mouths and pay the rent. Take the exampl
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The GPL wouldn't need to exist if we didn't have copyrights.
That said, I will agree with your first point - The granting of extremely limited exclusive rights for a single-digit number of years after creation quite likely does encourage people to create; Allowing the enforcement of copyrights for so long that the original vanishes into ob
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copyright (...) does not serve the goal of adding to the common stock of our culture.
However, it does serve the goal of preventing value to enter the common stock of our culture.
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The GPL wouldn't need to exist if we didn't have copyrights.
Completely false. Period.
The intent of the GPL is to encourage people to work collaboratively such that modifications are available to everyone. Without copyright law, the GPL becomes an MIT or BSD style license whereby anyone can take anything and use it for anything they want without ever contributing back changes. That's a huge difference. Its the cornerstone distinction between the GPL and other, more liberal licenses.
And contrary to the hippy ignorance which always seems to surround the anit-copyright
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You've inappropriately mixed contexts here, though... Without copyright, we have no need for someone to contribute back to the community, because the community doesn't need "permission" to take what they have and run with it.
In the closest situation that does exhibit the problem behavior you describe - A modification to GPL'd code f
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You've inappropriately mixed contexts here, though... Without copyright, we have no need for someone to contribute back to the community, because the community doesn't need "permission" to take what they have and run with it.
Let's assume we have that hypothetical no-copyright world.
Suppose I take some GPL'd library, build a product around it, and sell it as binaries only, no source code. Now, the community doesn't need permission to take what they have, yes. But all they have is a huge binary, which is pretty much useless for them. The effective contribution is thus zero.
Whereas, in a world with GPL+copyright, the community gets back the code which is then reused by members of that community...
Coincidentally, this is also Stall [computerworlduk.com]
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Coincidentally, this is also Stallman's official stance on copyright [computerworlduk.com] - he would agree to ditch copyright altogether, but only if the law would enforce copyleft (i.e. source availability) universally instead.
I knew there was a better link regarding copyright and RMS than the one I was posting, thanks for reminding me of it
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If you want to advocate socialism, by all means do so, but don't attempt to subvert capitalism by half truths, lies, and general misinformation/p>
So capitalism requires the government to grant monopolies to bushinesses? That's all a copyright is, is a monopoly granted by the government.
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Pull your head from your ass and stop offering red herrings as a troll.
By pushing a socialist agenda (all your work is our work and you have no say, and we'll consume said work without compensation), as it directly affects the market, it is by definition, anti-capitalism and pro-socialism. You can't force people to give away their work for free and claim you are anything other than socialist - at best.
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The government granting a monopoly is the very essence of modern copyright. This is certainly not a red hearing, and certainly not trolling. It's a simple statement of the principles and nature of a thing. I am not trolling, just because I've exposes a contradiction in you thinking. Nay, you have bought into an equivocation (I'll get to that later)
If I copy a thing, the person still has the thing for which they worked. If you make a bike and I copy the design, you can still pedal up and down the street all
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There is no contradiction - except in your retarded brain. The fact you believe there is a contradiction only proves you have absolutely no fucking clue what you are talking about - which is, in fact, 99.9999999999999999999999999999% of every pro-pirate dipshit who stupidity posts on the topic.
It boils down real quick and simple so either you'll completely understand and agree or it will completely validate you're a stupid, lying, dumb, piece of shit. Either everyone needs to participate in a socialist econ
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1. I'm not for theft and murder on the high seas.
2. I've provided example of at least two methods that can be used to make money from original artistic content that depend on a market, but do no depend on a copyright. I've provided links to works written by people who research the topic as part of their profession to support my argument. Yet if I don't agree with you (who by all appearances has no special knowledge of the subject, and is not acquainted with writings of those who do) I'm stupid or dishonest
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The argument isn't that "but its socialism", its that you are demanding a free ride in a capitalistic society. When your work is given for the greater good, get back to me. Until such time, you're just a lying, hypocritical, thieving, piece of shit.
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The concept of copyright in itself is not such a bad thing.
Well, I think it is.
Firstly it is the cornerstone on top of which the GPL and a large amount of open source software is built:
As pointed out; without copyright there would be little need to have the GPL.
Secondly, there are many of us who rely on producing content protected by copyright in order to put food in our mouths and pay the rent.
Not that many. Most writers I know don't make any money from copyright. They make money writing bits and pieces on demand, giving talks, etc. Only really popular writers actually make money from being able to stop someone else selling their material. Similarly, most musicians I know make money from recording jingles, doing backing tracks, playing live, giving lessons, etc. Only really big and popular bands make
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You don't understand the GPL.
Yes, I think I do. I've been following Free Software for...quite a few years now. ;-)
I don't want some big company taking my code, building on it and refusing to let me and others see the changes.
Why on earth would they want to do that, in a world without copyright?
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Getting rid of copyright won't prevent companies from using DRM and other technological measures to lock down the code.
The difference being, once the DRM is broken there will be legitimate non-DRM sources for the same software. It will make less and less sense for anyone to put out a DRMed version.
The only way to make sure that my code stays free for all is to use copyright to require others to keep it free.
Perhaps you're right. If you are, it's too high a price for me. I'd rather lose some code and gain additional freedom.
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Secondly, there are many of us who rely on producing content protected by copyright in order to put food in our mouths and pay the rent. Take the example of computer games, these take many man hours to produce initially from many different people but can be infinitely copied once they are a finished product. Without the concept of copyright you could buy a computer game, then sell it on as many times as you wanted without sharing any of the vast profits you made with the people who produced the product originally. Since you did not have the overheads of actually producing the game in the first place you could sell it far cheaper than the original authors and so more people would buy it from you than them. This would obviously not be any fairer than the current system.
Firstly, copyright originated as a system of censorship. If your book didn't have a copyright mark, you weren't allowed to publish it. Such marks were only granted to government friendly or neutral works.
Which just means the first few copies could be priced very highly or the game is not released unless a certain number of people pre-order it. It's not like there is just one possible way of doing things. You've made a false dichotomy, the way creative content is sold and supported now in the mainstream
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Secondly, there are many of us who rely on producing content protected by copyright in order to put food in our mouths and pay the rent. Take the example of computer games, these take many man hours to produce initially from many different people but can be infinitely copied once they are a finished product. Without the concept of copyright you could buy a computer game, then sell it on as many times as you wanted without sharing any of the vast profits you made with the people who produced the product originally. Since you did not have the overheads of actually producing the game in the first place you could sell it far cheaper than the original authors and so more people would buy it from you than them. This would obviously not be any fairer than the current system.
Firstly, copyright originated as a system of censorship. If your book didn't have a copyright mark, you weren't allowed to publish it. Such marks were only granted to government friendly or neutral works.
Which just means the first few copies could be priced very highly or the game is not released unless a certain number of people pre-order it. It's not like there is just one possible way of doing things. You've made a false dichotomy, the way creative content is sold and supported now in the mainstream or no way. There are other methods that do not require an intellectual monopoly. By having free adaptation and modification, one can argue that a lack of copyright will lead to more creative content being available. The works of Shakespeare and the greatest classical composers were created without the protection of copyright. Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote without copyright.
Check out Against Intellectual Monopoly by Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine or Against Intellectual Property by Stephan N Kinsella for some very cogent free-market arguments against copyright.
Firstly, I do not care how the system of copyright originated, I care what it evolved into. We started off as sea dwelling microbes but that bares little relation to us now.
Secondly Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas wrote before the printing press so there was far less need for copyright in his time with regard to books. The big thing that has changed recently is the ease with which things can be infinitely copied. You also completely ignored me mentioning computer games, this analogy was chosen specificall
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I did not ignore computer games, I gave you two models in which you could make money from them without copyright that I will now repeat. Charge a very high price for the first few copies, so that those who wanted to copy and sell at a low price would have to bid against each other to be the first in the market. Or don't release until you've presold enough to cover costs. Another method I've not yet mentioned, but in use today is to release only on consoles or other devices protected by signing keys from cop
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BREIN-fucked government? (Score:2)
Zie ze es grijnzen op die foto.. waar staat die gast van BREIN [wikipedia.org] eigenlijk? verstopt achter dhr. Teeven?
Oblig. Austin Powers GoldMember quote: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QJ882QYzr-M [youtube.com]
Re:Hehe, so much for cooperating (Score:4, Funny)
Dutch is just swamp German.
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Dutch is just swamp German.
Wrong. Dutch is closer to English than German is, so if anything, it is an elevated form of German.
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Dutch hater.
Would it really have hurt.... (Score:4, Informative)
to have given an accurate summary? They are not asking for an injunction again Newzbin, that site was sued into oblivion. They are asking for an injunction against Newzbin2 which has arisen to take its place. TFA you submitted says just that.
Actually I can't hold you to that, the article is horridly written.
"The Motion Picture Association (MPA), which represents studios including Twentieth Century Fox and Walt Disney, is urging a judge to grant an order forcing telecoms group BT to cut off access to the Newzbin website."
"The MPA won a court battle against Newzbin last year and the site was taken offline."
"But it reopened abroad under the name "Newzbin2" and is run by anonymous operators, compelling the MPA to take the unusual step of trying to force BT to block the site."
This is why you hire editor's to proof these things children. Someone should have slapped this writer for contradicting himself within his own story.
So friggin' what! (Score:2)
Kill Newsbin2 and Newsbin3 will take it's place, kill Niewsbin3 and along comes Newsbin4. Will the MPAA never accept that there is no winning this battle and concentrate it's energies on producing products that people are actually willing to buy instead of trying to continue their failing business model that assumes people will pay for whatever crap they choose to market? Make good movies and people will pay you to make more good movies, make crap and try to market it as gold and people will through shit ba
Re:So friggin' what! (Score:4, Insightful)
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until it hits the highest courts in the UK that is, which would maybe strike this down - or it could go to the EU, in which case it probably would be struck down.
Would otherwise have purchased them? (Score:4, Interesting)
Because all those using usenet to get movies would otherwise have purchased them? I doubt it.
Is this not the same as suing gun manufacturers for making lethal tools?
Re: Would otherwise have purchased them? (Score:5, Insightful)
No, no, no, you need a car analogy. (Score:2)
No, it's more like forcing pavement (sidewalk for you american-english speakers) makers to rip up the street to prevent you from going to a gun shop.
It's more akin to suing Voxhaul for selling a Vectra that could be potentially used to take a sports shooter who will never shoot anyone to a gun shop.
This is obviously a false scenario mind you, as no one in their right mind would be caught dead driving a Vectra.
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It's more akin to suing Voxhaul for selling a Vectra that could be potentially used to take a sports shooter who will never shoot anyone to a gun shop.
This is obviously a false scenario mind you, as no one in their right mind would be caught dead driving a Vectra.
No one in their right mind would be caught dead spelling "Vauxhall" as "Voxhaul" either. Come on. I'm from Canada, and they don't even sell those cars in North America, and I knew it was spelled incorrectly....
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Because all those using usenet to get movies would otherwise have purchased them? I doubt it.
I think if you can be bothered to download a movie from usenet (which is not as straightforward as just pressing "play" on your TV recorder), you are probably quite interested in that movie, and there is indeed quite a good chance you would have paid something to see it.
So, no, not everyone would otherwise have purchased it, but an unknown percentage would.
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is usenet more complex than torrents?
cause with torrents and magnet, i can just go to tpb, search, click on the magnet sign, and the movie on my disk in a few hours
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In my experience easier, more reliable and always fills my pipe. ymmv.
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And you get them from a single server, which you may have had to pay to subscribe to..
I don't see why they don't go after the big nntp server providers and try to subpoena logs out of them.
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I've always wondered this too, I wonder if its as simple as they just don't know about them. Remember rule 1...
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Even easier is subscribing to an rss feed of latest movies / episodes torrents.
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It may be more effort the first time (and maybe that is more effort than getting Netflix maybe not - depends on having a credit card, etc). Internationally it may be the easiest/only way to access this content After that it's just a browsing exercise.
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It's not much more complex. The point of newzbin seems to be to provide indexes of usenet groups, providing files that instruct clients which posts they need to download to get a particular movie and how to assemble them. Presumably you just go to their web site, pick the thing you want to download, click on a link to the file describing it, and then your usenet client grabs the files, assembles them and presents them for you to play.
The more interesting thing to note is that the number of users willing
What happened to HRA 1998, ECHR Article 10? (Score:2)
Right... And i thought such injunction is inconsistent with HRA 1998 / ECHR Article 10, freedom of expression. You shouldn't block the public access to information...
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I hope they get counter-sued for tortious interference in a contract between two other parties (BT and their consumers).
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Right... And i thought such injunction is inconsistent with HRA 1998 / ECHR Article 10, freedom of expression. You shouldn't block the public access to information...
Unless that information is copyrighted, or patented, or a trade secret, or immoral, or a matter of national security, or ...
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It's not an absolute right unfortunately:
Again??? (Score:2)
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Re:Again??? (Score:5, Insightful)
The American movie industry has been trying to censor the entire world's internet, in case you hadn't noticed. It being the UK this time is nothing special.
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MPA != MPAA
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They are most definitely not suffering massive losses. Massive copyright infringement does not necessarily mean massive losses, the two have never been connected in any meaningful way. It's merely speculation, fuzzy math, and fear-mongering from big business.
Exactly because... (Score:2)
...they go after someone every other day.
Have you noticed that YOU are already conditioned to consider that to be perfectly normal?
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You forgot to put massive losses in quotes (and with a [sic] after it), viz: "massive losses"[sic]
Fun quote (Score:5, Insightful)
"The applicants and others have been making huge efforts, not only against the Newzbin website, but against piracy in general and yet the industries are still suffering huge losses to piracy," Richard Spearman, representing the MPA, told the court.
I guess this is as close we'll ever get to hearing them say "Over the past 10 years we've spent a lot of our members' cash trying to kill off sharing sites, yet we've ultimately proven ineffective."
Apple, Amazon, Spotify, and others have affected piracy far more than the RIAA/MPAA/etc. ever will.
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The MAFIAA should take a look at usenet service providers. They charge a flat monthly fee for all-you-can-download or you can buy so many gigabytes of data allowance. If they offered something like that with music in FLAC format and a good selection of TV and movies I'd probably take them up.
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I suppose we'll eventually see a package deal with movies, TV, and music all for one monthly price. I doubt we'll ever see lossless included in that, but we can dream ;).
It's not a subscription service, but FLAC has been gaining more and more speed online.
Topspin [topspinmedia.com] handles a lot of big names (I see Beastie Boys, The Doors, Linkin Park, Lady Gaga, and Paul McCartney on their front page. Lots more deeper in.) as well as a ton of awesome indie bands (The Whigs [thewhigs.com] are great, check them out!).
Bandcamp [bandcamp.com] focuses on
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The MAFIAA should take a look at usenet service providers. They charge a flat monthly fee for all-you-can-download or you can buy so many gigabytes of data allowance. If they offered something like that with music in FLAC format and a good selection of TV and movies I'd probably take them up.
Or, to put it another way, these usenet service providers are making money out of copyright infringement, which I thought we didn't agree with here, as it will be perfectly obvious from which groups are being accessed whether people are downloading Linux ISOs or the latest Transformers pile of crap.
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Or, to put it another way, these usenet service providers are making money out of copyright infringement, which I thought we didn't agree with here, as it will be perfectly obvious from which groups are being accessed whether people are downloading Linux ISOs or the latest Transformers pile of crap.
What I meant was that there is a market for such a service, and as rights holders the MAFIAA are in a position to provide one legally. In fact that is pretty much what Spotify, Hulu and Netflix do, right? Flat monthly fee, consume as much as you like.
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I don't agree with people making money from copyright infringement, but that doesn't alter the fact that they are doing. And the fact that they are doing means that people are willing to pay to commit copyright infringement. That means that they are willing to pay for the media, but they don't agree with the terms that the owners are providing. They should take a look at this and see why they're rather pay to get their products illegally than legally.
To borrow their favourite metaphor, if people would
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A service like that was being offered in China by Nokia not so long ago if i recall...
Because they have to compete against widespread piracy in china, the end users actually get better deals... In other countries, they try to suppress piracy through legal means so they can gouge everyone else on price.
That's what happens (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's what happens when you make censorship legal, like the UK recently did. People are going to start expecting you to enforce it
Preventing people from downloading free versions of copyrighted material is not censorship. If I want to see Fast and Furious 5 (or whatever) I can go to the cinema, get it on DVD, watch it on Sky or whatever. I do not have a human right to be able to downloaded it for no cost at my convenience.
Calling this censorship is trivialising real censorship, such as executing journalists or placing artists under house arrest.
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Preventing people from downloading free versions of copyrighted material is not censorship. If I want to see Fast and Furious 5 (or whatever) I can go to the cinema, get it on DVD, watch it on Sky or whatever. I do not have a human right to be able to downloaded it for no cost at my convenience.
Not everything on Usenet (not even all the binary stuff) is illegal copies of copyrighted materials. There's plenty of legal stuff too. So yes, trying to make an ISP block an entire site is censorship. Especially since none of that material is actually available from Newzbin2. You can get NZB files from it, which you'll need to use with an actual Usenet provider to download anything illegal. Newzbin2 is basically an index, nothing more, it's not even quite equivalent to a torrent tracker because you ca
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What new act are you referring to that supposedly made censorship legal?
Censorship has always been legal in one way or another- IWF, BBFC etc.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Economy_Act_2010 [wikipedia.org]
Censorship in the name of fighting copyright infringement is still censorship.
No, it's not. Censorship means that the government makes it illegal to distribute or own a piece of work at all. Censoring would be applied to the distributors of films, not consumers.
"massive losses" == Boycott? (Score:4, Interesting)
How many here has boycotted the xxAA members?
I have, and that makes me a little worried when i see the xxAA use claims of "massive losses" to justify their continuous lawsuit, i mean; When i no longer go to, or rent movies, the xxAA suffers losses, that is after all the point of boycotting them :) BUT, if all the xxAA has to do, is to make the claim; if i am not buying their "content" then i must be stealing it! where does that leave me and my little boycott? is there any point to a boycott, if it can be dismissed so easily? should i just forget it, and start pirating?
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is there any point to a boycott, if it can be dismissed so easily? should i just forget it, and start pirating?
Boycotts do not work. Not against an adversary of the MAFIAA's financial might. Assassinating their officials, murdering their lawyers, bombing their offices and targeting their assets with wholesale destruction, however, will work. The sweet money your masters pay you ain't so sweet anymore if the price for it is being pumped full of red-hot lead at your workplace or being beheaded in front of your employees.
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Hell - what about the sheer reality of economics today? With less cash floating around people typically don't have as much leisure cash. Instead of seeing movies at the box office maybe they'll wait and rent? Or instead of movies, how about beer?
Genie is out the bottle (Score:4, Insightful)
At the end of the day, file sharing wont go away. It may well change forms and maybe even go back to sneaker net or "swap meets" but no matter what they do, they won't be able to get back to the 80s revenue streams. (It doesn't help that the music is more crap these days, but thats another argument)
At the end of the day, the world of file sharing has been changed forever by the internet. We can get offshore encrypted proxies for as little as $5.
The other major difference the net has made is that people are better connected and tend to gravitate to like minded people. In the world of instant communication, encryption and dropbox et all, sharing will just mutate into other forms, and groups with similar interests will create their own file sharing platforms and darknets.
Also in my area at least (or my interests) there are more artists giving stuff for free.
The days of mega money from media are gone. All this is akin to trying to put toothpaste back in the tube, it's not going to work.
Re:Genie is out the bottle (Score:5, Insightful)
When I was a student most other students had twin tape decks and shelves full of cassette tapes. Strangely enough, the "80s revenue streams" happened after that.
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I have kids now. We can and have fed our family of 4 for a week on ten quid when the need has arose and sometimes when it hasn't just because. I consider ourselves comfortable and know other people and families in comparatively impoverished circumstances to our selves. I've never met anyone who is malnourished or star
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When you grow up...
You'll stop using this little phrase in order to make yourself feel superior to someone you disagree with.
La-La Land (Score:2)
When you grow up you will realise that the relatively small amount of money that adults spend on music/movies/games or whatever is really not an issue to them, and they'd rather spend ten quid on a DVD than hours downloading and reassembling it from usenet.
You obviously live in Yuppieland and have no idea of the plight of lower middle class families in America. Dual 100K incomes is not the norm. Hell, dual $30k incomes isn't even the norm.
I personally know a number of families who are having trouble putting food on the table on a weekly basis, and no they aren't lazy fucks. One family has five jobs between the two adults. I'd like to see you try to support a family on $10 or less an hour. That's a premium wage for "non-professional" workers in my city
Films can be download for free? (Score:2, Funny)
Sorry, but with the current state of the film industry, I would only watch films if they paid me - paid me an awful lot to watch their awful crap.
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Sorry, but with the current state of the film industry, I would only watch films if they paid me - paid me an awful lot to watch their awful crap.
No one is forcing you to watch their awful crap, you know, any more than you have to listen to their horrible music.
The first rule of usenet (Score:3)
Usenet? Preposterous--no one's used that fossil internets relic since 1990. The MPAA would be smarter to go after newer technology, like that Napster stuff.
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I don't know. There's no such thing as usenet anyway.
That's horrible! (Score:2)
A potential loss of potential profit. Of course, using their superior intellect, they are able to transform that into a situation where they are certainly losing money that already belongs to them!
Enough BS (Score:2)
OK, it is time for reckoning. Does anyone believe anymore that money loss is the prime drive of the media distributors? I don't. It is impossible that all of them are fools and do not see that they can only loose.
So, what is the deal? What do they want?
I don't know but my speculation is that it is about control of the internet. They just got a good deal with governments. Our Overlords use false, unprovable claim of money loss, the distributors play along. G'ment installs total control banging the drum (rein
What bothers me is... (Score:2)
They are trying to get BT to use this s00per s33cret anti child pornography blacklist to do their dirty work. The blacklist that wasn't supposed to ever be used for commercial interests and was supposed to be 'to protect the children.' Now the MPA is saying to use it .. to protect their commercial interests.
Newzbin doesn't host the files either. They're an indexer, and even these days I'd still say that there is a lot more perfectly legal content on usenet than not. There are still thousands of very active
going after the wrong person (Score:2)
Assuming this website is in violation of the law, then they should be targetting the operators of the website, not BT.
Its like suing a bus company because a shoplifter used the bus to go and rob a store.
Bullshit action like this just makes our broadband connections more expensive.
An Alternative? (Score:2)
Am I the only one who would be willing to pay a reasonable amount of money for an HD downloaded non-DRMed copy?
Netflix is close with their service but you have to keep re-streaming the thing every time. I'd be happy to pay a reasonable fee for a service where I could get something similar to what one could get from the newsgroups. That being a fast and high quality download without DRM that I can stick on my local server and watch anywhere in the house.
But no.. it's easier to just sue everyone and try and f
Re:BAN the MPAA from the network (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a similar thought when I saw this story yesterday. BT and the other ISPs in the UK should just kick the MPAA off the internet - cut any service they have in the UK and block all their sites hosted abroad. There's no reason why ISPs should be forced to do business with them.
Re: (Score:2)