The newsgroups have remained largely outside the focus of the entertainment industry's campaign to thwart illegal file-sharing, thanks to dual-use role as discussion/bulletin board system. This role has diminished significantly in recent months, as major ISPs across the United States have discontinued their newsgroup support.

What's left? The major newsgroup players remaining are third party providers such as Giganews and indexing services such as Newzbin. Newzbin operates similarly to BitTorrent indexing sites, as they both act like card catalogs in a library. Similar to BitTorrent indexing/tracking sites, Newzbin contains no copyrighted work on their servers - only NZB files. NZB files are analogous to torrent files; like torrent files, NZB point the user to where the file is located on the network.

And like BitTorrent indexing sites, Newzbin may soon face litigation. In an announcement made today, Newzbin has stated they expect litigation in the coming weeks. It appears that Newzbin has received two distinct complaints regarding their indexing service, yet compliance with these complaints doesn't appear to be part of the plan.

"It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights," the announcement reads. "We will be defending ourselves vigorously against both the complainants if necessary and we believe a court will agree with our view that linking to content on Usenet is indeed legal and our method of dealing with unlawful content is appropriate. We believe that, or we wouldn't still be here."

Newzbin has become a popular destination for newsgroup users and has helped simplify a once difficult network. As this story evolves, and if Newzbin is sued, further details will be available.

This story is filed in these Slyck News categories
Newsgroups/Usenet :: Indexing Sites

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