Newzbin (paid usenet search engine) closes due to legal action

http://www.newzbin.com

by kacy • 16 years ago

37 19 16 years ago

newzbin.com

Hates_• 16 years ago

Very sad day indeed. One of the few online services I was more then happy to pay for.

mistermann• 16 years ago

nzbmatrix is excellent.

emehrkay• 16 years ago

Fuck. I love usnet, I hope this isn't the start of a trend

ellisd• 16 years ago

the first rule of usenet... don't talk about usenet

ebtalley• 16 years ago

the second rule of usenet... don't talk about usenet. Thats what killed the big H...

baskinghobo• 16 years ago

This is stupid. People don't use Usenet because it's too hard to use and costs money, not because people don't talk about it.

cmars232• 16 years ago

Nah, usnet is overrated, themnet is where it's at!

Batsu• 16 years ago

Since details seem very lacking between the link and the post in the link, here's a short summary Newzbin via Wikiepdia:

"One of the main technologies produced is an XML-based file format called NZB files, which contain a list of messageIDs that are related to specific postings on Usenet. Through the use of these files, Usenet clients are able to directly download material from Usenet without having to pre-fetch the headers for the target group. Thus, the main benefit of the direct link is improving the efficiency of Usenet binaries. It is technologies such as these that are increasing the popularity of Usenet for file sharing."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NewzBin

It seems their crime is indexing binaries. This does nothing to stop file sharing through Usenet, just ever so slightly impedes access.

cookiecaper• 16 years ago

I don't know how they get away with this. Google links almost exclusively to copyrighted content, but they're not shut down. Why is Google allowed to exist and other indexes aren't?

jsz0• 16 years ago

A few big differences. Newzbin was charging for access to this catalog of NZB files that overwhelmingly pointed to copyrighted material. Newzbin is located in the UK under the jurisdiction of different copyright enforcement laws. My understanding is, in the UK, the standard is simply knowingly profiting from copyright infringement. Newzbin was making over £1 Million/year. Apparently they also failed to act on take down requests. Seems like a pretty clear cut case to me. It appears the operators of the site did basically nothing to protect themselves and mounted a very weak defense when they were caught.

devicenull• 16 years ago

Google has enough money to pay for lawyers.

benologist2• 16 years ago

Google linking to illegally distributed material is incidental - the only similarity is that TPB/etc linking to legally distributable material is also incidental.

zenocon• 16 years ago

http://newzleech.com - I've always used newzleech. They were also shut down for a while but they are back now.

Newzbin (paid usenet search engine) closes due to legal action

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