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| Hollywood Forces UK ISP To Block Newzbin Usenet Site Posted: 28 Jul 2011 03:13 AM PDT Following a hearing in London’s High Court, leading UK ISP BT will be forced to block subscriber access to Usenet indexing site Newzbin2. Under the banner of the MPA, the leading Hollywood studios successfully argued that by letting the site continue unabated their interests would be severely damaged. The decision, the first of its kind in the UK, increases the pressure on other ISPs.
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. Source: Hollywood Forces UK ISP To Block Newzbin Usenet Site |
| Anti-Piracy Lawyers Rip Off Work From Competitor Posted: 27 Jul 2011 01:40 PM PDT Anti-piracy lawyer John Steele is without doubt one of the most active proponents of the pay-up-or-else settlement scheme in the United States. In less than a year he filed more than 80 mass-lawsuits for his clients, targeting thousands of alleged BitTorrent users. Nevertheless it appears that Steele himself can be awarded the pirate label, since he’s blatantly ripped of the work of a competitor. Copyright is a double-edged sword, and those who sharpen one side often get cut by the other. We see it happening time and time again, often revealing the double standard and one-sidedness of lawyers and copyright holders. Last year, for example, the U.S Copyright Group ripped off the website of a competitor. They copied the design and code of the Copyright Enforcement Group and passed it off as their own. Only when we called them out on it did they remove all “infringing” content. But the US Copyright Group are not the only infringing lawyers, there are plenty more. The most recent example uncovers the copyright disregard of one the most active anti-piracy lawyers, John Steele. In less than a year Steele and his partner filed dozens of mass-lawsuits targeting thousands of BitTorrent users, but apparently their targets aren’t the only ones with a habit of copying content without permission. In the settlement letters that Steele sends to alleged copyright infringers there’s a frequently asked questions section. Contrary to what one might expect, these questions were not written by Steele himself. Like the U.S. Copyright Group, Steele went for the lazy option and simply ripped off the FAQ section penned by the Copyright Enforcement Group. Below is a comparison of the questions ‘stolen’ by Steele, which clearly reveals that they are identical. Excerpt from Steele’s FAQExcerpt from CEG’s FAQTorrentFreak contacted the Copyright Enforcement Group to ask whether Steele has permission to use their copyrighted text, and we were told that he doesn’t. In fact, the Copyright Enforcement Group told us that they may take steps to prevent Steele from blatantly ‘stealing’ their work in the future. So there we have it. A notorious anti-piracy lawyer who claims to have spent as much as $250,000 to develop a BitTorrent tracking tool, doesn’t even bother to write his own settlement letters. In theory one could argue that he’s profiting from infringing the work of others, something that’s not taken lightly by the courts nowadays. A quick search further reveals that Steele and his partner are not the only one who ripped off the FAQ from the Copyright Enforcement Group. Another group, operating under the name Copyright Action Network has done the same, again without permission from the copyright holders. Oh the irony… |
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