20th Century fox vs Newzbin

Playing Devils Advocate for a moment, if I supplied to you exact instructions on how to make a bomb (let's say for the sake of argument that it was a specialist sort of bomb that needed precise instructions) and you blew something up with it wouldn't I be at least partially responsible?

Although I'm not whiter-than-white I think it's kinda disingenuous to just stick your hands up and say "we're not providing the files, we're just providing exact instructions on where to get them without which it wouldn't be possible (at least on this site)".

*shrug*
 
Durzel said:
Playing Devils Advocate for a moment, if I supplied to you exact instructions on how to make a bomb (let's say for the sake of argument that it was a specialist sort of bomb that needed precise instructions) and you blew something up with it wouldn't I be at least partially responsible?

Although I'm not whiter-than-white I think it's kinda disingenuous to just stick your hands up and say "we're not providing the files, we're just providing exact instructions on where to get them without which it wouldn't be possible (at least on this site)".

*shrug*
Click to expand...

It is possible, it simply takes longer.
 
starfighter said:
Films and games cost a lot to make and money should be paid for their service, I don't have as much sympathy for the music industry. :p
Click to expand...

I think where they have difficulty is convincing people that downloading a DVD is detrimental to the industry mere weeks after a studio has gleefully pointed out how they just made $600 million in profit from cinema sales :p
 
Durzel said:
Although I'm not whiter-than-white I think it's kinda disingenuous to just stick your hands up and say "we're not providing the files, we're just providing exact instructions on where to get them without which it wouldn't be possible (at least on this site)".

*shrug*
Click to expand...

One difference between torrents and newsgroups lies just there though, a torrent needs a torrent file and a tracker (both of which TPB provided) to enable you to get at the file. The files are not hosted by TPB but you can't exactly randomly type IPs into a client and hope you get lucky and find the right files.

You don't need any of what Newzbin provide to get stuff from Usenet. On a very basic level it's essentially a giant forum and all the files are attachments. If you want to, you can happily try and browse it and manually find all the files you want, something you couldn't do with a torrent.

This is something I think will prove a crucial difference in any cases against usenet searchers/indexers.
 
Durzel said:
Playing Devils Advocate for a moment, if I supplied to you exact instructions on how to make a bomb (let's say for the sake of argument that it was a specialist sort of bomb that needed precise instructions) and you blew something up with it wouldn't I be at least partially responsible?

Although I'm not whiter-than-white I think it's kinda disingenuous to just stick your hands up and say "we're not providing the files, we're just providing exact instructions on where to get them without which it wouldn't be possible (at least on this site)".

*shrug*
Click to expand...

You could also find these files using Google, so shouldn't they also be in court?
 
Ekim said:
You could also find these files using Google, so shouldn't they also be in court?
Click to expand...

I think that will come next if they win - it wouldnt make sense to take on Google as your first usenet target when the whole thing is untested in court.

The key thing for the usenet user is that they are not file sharing - I dont think downloading copyrighted material is considered any where near as bad making available for share.
 
The fact is even if every single last newzbin type site got shut down for providing easy access to downloading illegal materials, we just go back the old and slightly more inconvienient days of, painfully, downloading headers daily and searching for the files you want. Tedious and slow at times, but not hard, set some headers downloading, go away for ages, come back and search for what you want.

The only easier thing newzbin offers, is help finding things you don't know about, IE finding an episode of house the day after its on is easy. But grabbing a film you don't know was posted, well you have to scroll through an entire list of 10k's of headers to spot it.

This case isn't against usenet at all, and they really can't shut down usenet and its not worth their time trying. The very worst outcome is back to the long winded method of finding files, the most likely outcome, is them being laughed out of the courtroom.

I've said a 1000 times, and mean it, if I could buy a monthly subscription to download my favourite TV shows legally, I would, their profits would massively increase and everyones happy. We'd also be able to get rid of the irritating and almost completely ignored adverts and shows would get obvious viewing numbers, and people can vote with their subscriptions/ratings more easily so you'd hopefully get less great shows canceled, because ad revenue from being on at some stupid dead end slot would become a non issue. Great shows would get watched, whenever is convienient, and the exec's would see things like Firefly getting huge ratings and it wouldn't have been canceled.

The thing is, don't we all know thats exactly where the tv/film industry is going in the future anyway, so why wait?
 
Last edited:
This is what I dont get newzbin merely index something that is already available, ok it makes it easier but they dont host the files. If they really want to take someone on it should be a server provider after all without that you aint going any where.

No dmpoole im saying they seem to be attacking the wrong part of the system, wasting their time taking one indexing site to court (theres loads out there) when the actual villian would be the provider.

The other thing is all this stuff is freely avaible by a bit of googling! Google has got to be the worse culprit in all of this? How many people (joe bloggs) who can barely use the internet but knows how to google? Half the morons I use to work with did this, they had no idea how a torrent worked but knew how to Google for something they were after.

Without getting the thread closed what do people feel the Industry need to do?

I think a pricing rethink would go along way.

With people being able to download at greater speeds now a legit service wouldnt go a miss.

For me one of the biggest issues is cinemas. I dont think either of the 2 in my town have changed in a long loooong time! £7.60 for a movie the other day seems a bit steep. When you consider people can rent a movie for next to nothing and enjoy it in their OWN living room with a semi decent setup it makes it more enjoyable than sitting eating over priced food/drink and in seats someone else has farted in.
 
EVH said:
Here's an idea for the pirates: Buy films.

Here's an idea for the movie studios: Allow download of HQ movies for a decent price.
Click to expand...

The movie studios need to make the first move though, which would potentially cost them a lot of money (under cutting your main distributor/retailer ain't going to be pretty)
 
Indeed, if you go and sign up and pay for Newzbin right now, all you can do is look at what's on usenet and download XML files which also describe what's on usenet.

Nothing else, you can in no way access anything illegal through Newzbin.

They've only gone after Newzbin because there's case precedents on the side of companies like Astraweb and Giganews who actually provide the access to the data. (and indeed store it on their servers).

[edit]
Just realised that's not quite true, you can view and download edited and redacted versions of .nfo files, which are of course the copyright of the scene groups that create them, but they aren't the ones who have sued them. anything illegal in nfo files is edited out.
 
Last edited:
Looking at how long newsgroups have been in working order (far longer than any standard P2P) it would be pretty surprising if nntp gets affected by an outcome of this - more likely more people will sign up for newsgroups especially those offering SSL encryption.

To shut down newsgroups entirely would mean putting a halt to ISP provided newsgroup servers no? ISPs don't even moderate them, granted most have very low retention periods like 7 days for Virgin Media but 7 days is what most people would need in order to find their latest episode of LOST or whatever.
 
It will take them years to get newsgroups down I think. Why can't they provide a service that rivals newsgroups? To download pretty much anything you want you can use newsgroups for about $14 a month right? Surely they could offer something that rivals that for something about the same price?
If they don't want to lower their price to compete then it's their loss.
 
WalesOwl said:
Why can't they provide a service that rivals newsgroups? To download pretty much anything you want you can use newsgroups for about $14 a month right?
Click to expand...

And how would they divide the money between films, music, software and everything else?
The thing is that people will always want something for nothing and even if the latest blockbuster was £1 the majority want it for nothing.
 
I use newsgroups but i've never used newzbin, mainly because i already pay for usenet connectivity, i don't wan tto pay to search it, besides, there are literally hundreds of other free nzb sites.
 
robgmun said:
Newsgroups seem like a pain in the ass to be honest, i'll stick with TPB
Click to expand...

They're actually so much easier to use and get content from, far ahead of any torrent service and plus, you're more likely to get exactly what you're looking for instead of a fake/virus.
 
They need to stop battling piracy and just release an easier, decently priced alternative.

Steam has singlehandedly triumphed in the pc market for the gaming side of it.


Now we need something like steam for movies (high def and standard), tv shows (high def and standard) and music (lossless and selection of lossy)

25p per song
1 quid per episode (deals for full series)
2.50 per film
 
A STEAM like method of content distribution for the media industry would hurt retail sales within a very short space of time I'd imagine especially with speeds of internet connections today but it would be absolutely amazing.

Using STEAM is a reference imagine being able to gift a bought HD movie to a friend who could only watch it for a limited period of time before it de-activated from his or her account or it only playing 25% of the way in so if they liked it they could also purchase it but at a discount since it's been referred to them by a friend?

Deals like that on such a system would be great and would prove popular and having STEAM like weekend freebie days and so on.

I think certain people on the forums could probably even get together and do something - I call dibs on a few % of the profits :)
 
ok mrk, you and me can take the profits, now we just need some monkeys with typewriters to make Steam²

/hawhaw



And before anyone suggest it, iTunes doesn't count, Apple couldn't write a notepad app that would be stable in windows.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom