Hands across the ocean are giving us a slap on the wrist -- major Hollywood movie studios, including Paramount, Fox and Disney, are seeking an injunction that would force BT to block its customers from accessing filesharing website Newzbin.
Newzbin allegedly hosts links to copyright material, including Hollywood blockbusters, by searching Usenet discussion groups. That's why movie studios -- under the banner of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) want the site shut down.
In a statement reported by the BBC, the MPA said, "Newzbin has no regard for UK law and it is unacceptable that it continues to infringe copyright on a massive and commercial scale when it has been ordered to stop by the High Court."
If successful, the block would be the first of its kind in the UK.
Understandably though, BT isn't too keen on blocking its customers from accessing the site. BT doesn't suffer directly from movie piracy, but if it's forced to curtail users' Internet access it could experience a strong backlash from its customers -- and find itself deluged in complaints from other copyright holders.
BT told the courts yesterday that the injunction would be the "thin end of the wedge" -- implying that it would open the floodgates, leading to petitions for BT to block more sites, or sites that contained "defamatory allegations or private and confidential information". In short, it would be a slippery slope, and before very long there wouldn't be any Internet left at all.
Newzbin has been shut down before, in March of last year, when the High Court ruled against it, but since then it's resurfaced under the name Newzbin2, operating from the Seychelles. The MPA clearly thinks that if it can't shut the site down, it can at least block Internet users from accessing it.
Should Newzbin2 be blocked? Or is the very notion of movie studios stepping in to decide which sites you can and can't visit enough to make you vomit out your own eyeballs somehow? Let us know in the comments section, or sound off on our Facebook page.
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Comments 8
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Grier78 29 June, 2011 15:31
Sure you can block newzbin2, but what about newzbin3 and then newzbin4?
Anonymous 29 June, 2011 16:13
When will the MPA etc realise that no matter what they do the people who want to share data online will always be one step ahead of them?
Anonymous 29 June, 2011 16:17
Newzbin doesn't even host files. that would be like going after sites that publish information about torrents instead of the servers hosting the trackers. Its just another example of someone who hasn't a clue about computers trying to be clever and earn an obscene wage giving REALLY bad advice to these companies.
Still, it totally misunderstands the nature of the problem. Culture is not objective, as such one cannot censor anything really. By blocking access to the suite you would only be blocking from a range of ip and not PHYSICALLY blocking. In order to make this work you would also have to block any form of connection facade that allows you to operate through anothers IP - doing this would 'break the internet' for many reasons.
In fact all these copmanies are doing is causing more and more people to use extremly strong encryption and proxies for the majority of their traffic. The result will be governments being unable to monitor what anyone is doing because of all the white noise ... all over a few quid that they really cant show is being lost bcause their assumption is 1 download = 1 lost sale which has been proved wrong. I own all the futurama dvd's but dl them regularly because its quicker and easier than digging out the dvd ...
A SUGGESTION: IF PEOPLE ARE PAYING FOR USENET THEN WHY DONT YOU OFFER THE SERVICE? IDIOTS.
Its stupid, their aim is money.
Anonymous 29 June, 2011 18:49
one word
VPN!
Anonymous 29 June, 2011 19:56
This wouldn't change a thing, they even offer rss feeds on newzbin, so you'd just get a huge bunch of newzbin clones popping up everywhere (in turn, making MORE of the problem)
Perhaps a complete ban on alt.binaries.* is coming?
Anonymous 29 June, 2011 20:52
Yet again a joke lawsuit nzb files don't hold any copyright protected data they are just pointers to stuff kept on somebody else's server. It's the same as suing Google for pointing you to newzbin or the pirate bay. Not like it makes any difference anyway these a lot of nzb sites out there. Worse case scenario have to go back to the old fashioned way of updating groups and searched them.
Anonymous 29 June, 2011 20:53
Yet again a joke lawsuit nzb files don't hold any copyright protected data they are just pointers to stuff kept on somebody else's server. It's the same as suing Google for pointing you to newzbin or the pirate bay. Not like it makes any difference anyway these a lot of nzb sites out there. Worse case scenario have to go back to the old fashioned way of updating groups and searched them.
pablouk1 29 June, 2011 22:00
Good luck, one day these people will understand how the Internet works .
Isn't blocking sites against my European human right??