Newzbin isn't going down without a fight

Now they're taking it to far. Leave the newsgroups alone. I'm sure sometime down the line there is going to be a generic indexing chatroom on Efnet ran by bots, and they will try to sue the bot.

way to fight the good fight newzbin!

No the newzbin!! C'MON!! this people are really annoying!!

Um..how is this happening? I left Newzbin over 6 months ago when they went all invite on me plus subscription and NOW they have a lawsuit? Wasnt the sole purpose of having invite only to keep the MPAA/RIAA out? So what happened? Someone sneak in?

And anyways Im seeing way too many articles saying "usenet" is dying. WTF are they smoking? Hundreds of different usenet servers around the world far outnumber the number of p2p programs you could use.

sounds like too many people broke the first rule of usenet...

hey for all people know usenet is dying.. why contradict?

they seriously needed to establish those rules a little more clearly.

Originally posted by grkblood:

---

Now they're taking it to far. Leave the newsgroups alone. I'm sure sometime down the line there is going to be a generic indexing chatroom on Efnet ran by bots, and they will try to sue the bot.

---

That's the idea.. allow people to get rich by charging for access to pirated content while stomping down on the little torrent sites who don't directly charge users.

For a long time I have believed that the newsgroups and their servers have indulged in "piracy for profit".. It's about time somebody went after them for their business methods.

I want to see the credit card details of all the subscribers with lists of what they accessed published.. How many politicians and lawmakers will we catch I wonder.

Quote:

---

Originally posted by grkblood:

---

Now they're taking it to far. Leave the newsgroups alone. I'm sure sometime down the line there is going to be a generic indexing chatroom on Efnet ran by bots, and they will try to sue the bot.

---

That's the idea.. allow people to get rich by charging for access to pirated content while stomping down on the little torrent sites who don't directly charge users.

For a long time I have believed that the newsgroups and their servers have indulged in "piracy for profit".. It's about time somebody went after them for their business methods.

I want to see the credit card details of all the subscribers with lists of what they accessed published.. How many politicians and lawmakers will we catch I wonder.

---

dude you are as lame as they get. i hope you get hurt

You will get hurt!!.. what a *.

Another little $h1t comes along and tries something eh??.. welcome to misery turdbreath.. had fun licking those a$$es today??

Whose crack did you crawl out of eh?.. newzbin baby??.. use daddys credit card to pay for it???

No worthwhile comment to make about the story??.. no.. obviously just another afterdawn (only a member.. colloquilism for dick..chopper.. penis.. old fella..) * out for a cheap shot at somebody who has an adult opinion instead of being herd mentality... One of the bastards who sexually abused me as a chile was recently arrested and jailed.. for sexually abusing me when I was 10.. NO.. for uploading images of children being sexually abused to a newsgroup.....

Insult over.. It's about time these CRIMINAL PIRATES got what is coming to them. A good suing and hammering into the ground where their greedy money grabbing and exploitation deserves.

What's lame about wanting to see who has fingers in which pot? Which vested interests and public figures will be exposed for downloading child pornography and other illegal stuff through these newsgroups.. I want to see the details.. I want to see how many senior public figures are involved and have had payoffs to look the other way all these years.

You can't hurt me.. I am indestructable by normal means.

Quote:

---

The only major newsgroups that are remaining are Giganews and major indexing services such as Newzbin

---

there seems to be some confusion in the article published by DVDBack23

- Giganews isn't a newsgroup - it's a hosting company that runs the servers that retain the files posted on newsgroups for 240 days and allows you to download them
- A newsgroup is the place where the files are posed such as "alt.binaries.divx" etc
- Giganews is not the only major server remaining - newshosting.com and all the other big guns are still out there and have not been sued or removed ( yet )
- Newzbin is by no means the only major nzb site still online - I could list at least another ten to you off the top of my head that either index or run nzb search engines and they are free unlike newzbin.

"For a long time I have believed that the newsgroups and their servers have indulged in "piracy for profit".. It's about time somebody went after them for their business methods."

Newzbin charge like 10p a week... it covers the cost of running the servers, it's not exactly profiting on the scale you are making out. They also do a invite only system, if they wanted to make some real profits they would just have it open and charge more.

For that small fee you get ssl encryption, no ads, fast site, and they log nothing about index files you downloads or any searches, only things they log are that the user has an account with credit, and comments. So even if a court ordered them to hand over server logs to get the politicians like you suggest, they wouldn't be "outed" by newzbin.

Next you will suggest because AfterDawn have tutorials on how to rip/encode DVD's (which is an illegal practice in the UK for copyrighted DVD's btw, even for personal use, nobody really cares here though, including movie association... yet), and that by serving ads (which they get paid for and covers running costs, and probably nets them more than newzbin could dream of) that they should also be taken down.

Originally posted by AtiLaw:

---

Newzbin charge like 10p a week... it covers the cost of running the servers, it's not exactly profiting

---

actually it's three times that - they say so themselves here :-
http://v3.newzbin.com/account/topup/

now based on their internet traffic rankings - they have well over 100,000 regular users but let's use 100,000 as a figure for argumnet's sake - it means every month they make a minimum of around £ 120,000 - that's almost a quarter of a million dollars - bear in mind they have to run servers yes but only the nzb files are downloaded which are an average of 200-400 kb and also take into account that they will block your account , even when you have paid if you become "greedy" and download what they deem to be too many NZB files

their server expenses per month are probably based on 2 or 3 top class servers running in unison for heavy online traffic ( about 4,000 users at any one time ) - that will be about £ 1,000 a month....add to that the advertising revenue they get from non paying users on the site who see all the banners etc and they are making well in excess of £ 100,000 a month - or more than 1 million a year.

personally i don't really care about that because at least they don't delight in promoting themselves as the moral defenders of free downloading and the champions of p2p goodness like those obnoxious hypocrites on pirate bay who at the same time are now all millionaires from the ad profits they have made from the site and the never ending stunts they pull to promote it.

"actually it's three times that - they say so themselves here :-
http://v3.newzbin.com/account/topup/"

My mistake - I forgot I took their half price offer they do every christmas, I spent £6 on for like 52 weeks - which amounts to about 11p a week. Every year they do that offer, and as far as I can tell every year most regular users buy a years worth too. I just remembered since I last added credit they upped their price to help cover the cost of legal people too, so I should have thought more about what I was typing.


"yes but only the nzb files are downloaded which are an average of 200-400 kb and also take into account that they will block your account , even when you have paid if you become "greedy" and download what they deem to be too many NZB files"

Well, technically they are offering ssl which puts extra load on the servers too, also each page which they allow a huge amount of results on per page, and images, and 3 versions of the interface. I've had nzb files of over a 11MB before - a 720p episode of Heroes is about 400KB, but it's size really depends how many parts it's referencing, an xbox 360 game is a file of about 1.8MB. As far as I remember they limited the number of nzb files you can download in 24 hours, but I think it was in response to some people hammering the site, instead of just using bookmarks. I've never hit any limits even though I don't use the bookmark system, not that I'm saying it doesn't happen.

It's interesting what you said about the user base and annual taking from fee's, never realised it was that popular, if their server costs are even half of what they would take then they make alot more money than I realised! :S

"add to that the advertising revenue they get from non paying users on the site who see all the banners etc and they are making well in excess of £ 100,000 a month - or more than 1 million a year."

There are no non-paying members anymore as far as I know - the site is closed to members only. They stopped public access a while back.

"personally i don't really care about that because at least they don't delight in promoting themselves as the moral defenders of free downloading and the champions of p2p goodness like those obnoxious hypocrites on pirate bay who at the same time are now all millionaires from the ad profits they have made from the site and the never ending stunts they pull to promote it."

Agreed - I'm not really bothered either, just bored at work and fancied replying to some fun stuff! lol I also didn't think they profited, but having seen some of your math, I'm wondering if I was just being a little nieve and taking their site news updates on face value, which I usually don't do.

It would suck for me if they were closed down, but it's not a big deal to just look for the posts myself... it's just quicker through them.

me thinks too many people ar watching the waving wand (lawsuit, poor news bin or the go get em view) and not paying attention to what the other hand is doing (if everyone pays by credit card and what you d/l is filed... you are screwed blued and tattoo'd, problem is the "impotent" people will accidentily be deleted... royalty parties on and the peasents are kicked down)

...but I'm just some stupid n00b wtf would I know?

well, if people have a problem w/ paying to use newzbin....then don't ;)

i don't mind, they provide a great service for the money....beats downloading millions of headers and being able to comment on each post is nice. newzbin is in a league of their own...no other usenet indexing site's offering rivals newzbin @ all....after all, newzbin created the open source NZB (NewZBin)...which, btw, is just a xml file.

btw, newzbin is just a database...they offer no binaries to download....all nzb's are generated on the file, so they don't even host anyfiles...p2p on the other hand....................................................

i don't need to say anything else.

for anyone who doesn't like it, get over it. ur opinion doesn't matter much to me ;/

Originally posted by lysdexic:

---

me thinks too many people ar watching the waving wand (lawsuit, poor news bin or the go get em view) and not paying attention to what the other hand is doing (if everyone pays by credit card and what you d/l is filed... you are screwed blued and tattoo'd,

---

well in all the years that all the p2p sites of whatever variety or newzbin etc have been raided and sued - I never heard of 1 forum member of any site being prosecuted - they always go for the site owner or admin.

downloading a nzb file/hash from a site like newzbin is no proof that you then later actually activated that file and downloaded it onto your PC.

theoretically if you used a non encrypted nezbin service and actually downloaded files and the police busted down your door and caught you red handed - then fair enough - difficult to deny it - but the downloading of a newzbin hash file or paying to be a member of the site is no proof of anything and is certainly not illegal.

choosing to install programs that cana ctivate that hash and then downloading it to your HDD and watching it - now that in some countries obviously is illegal.

Originally posted by domie:

---

well in all the years that all the p2p sites of whatever variety or newzbin etc have been raided and sued - I never heard of 1 forum member of any site being prosecuted - they always go for the site owner or admin.

downloading a nzb file/hash from a site like newzbin is no proof that you then later actually activated that file and downloaded it onto your PC.

theoretically if you used a non encrypted nezbin service and actually downloaded files and the police busted down your door and caught you red handed - then fair enough - difficult to deny it - but the downloading of a newzbin hash file or paying to be a member of the site is no proof of anything and is certainly not illegal.

choosing to install programs that cana ctivate that hash and then downloading it to your HDD and watching it - now that in some countries obviously is illegal.

---

I apologize for being ignorant about how news groups like newzbin work and I am all for paying a fair price for a service (I did go look @ giganews since I couldn't access newzbin). From what I see news groups are a good value.

What I do have a little understanding of is how the "powers that be" work. The best way to herd the "sheeple" to point B is to apply pressure on point A from all directions, then provide a path to point B, shine pretty lights on point B and play an appropiate sound byte. If I were a "sheepleherd" I would want point B to be more controlable than point A. It's easier to pull lambs from a pen where they all have id tags in their ears, than it is on the open pasture.

The above article isn't "the war", it isn't even a major battle in the war it's only one round fired in one small firefight. It's like looking @ an 8x10 jpeg @ 2000x magnification and discussing what this "pixel" is. What does it mean in the big picture?

Another thing a "sheepleherd" would like to see is sheeple arguing over blades of grass while the pen's gate is being closed. Small groups arguing over the color of a pixel are no threat... From the wizard of Oz... "Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain".

It could be years before anyone sees what part this plays in the grand scheme. If news groups prove to be "teflon" then it's time to avoid them. If they get the snot kicked out of them ... then support them.

The only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Small steps, small changes that seem unrelated... then one day we all wonder how we ended up where we are. [and just for the record if I had broadband I'd belong to newsgroups anyway]

The music, film and software companies are hell bent on making the internet just another commercial outlet for their vastly overpriced and over hyped products. I already pissed off that these large companies can pay to get themselves at the top of the search engine listings making it very difficult to find genuine original pages about what you are looking for. The newsgroups are the only unregulated area left and it is inevitable that these large money making institutions would eventually get around to getting the same sort of regulations in place that are already destroying the internet. Governments are no better as most of them would like to control it as well - of course they leap on the child protection bandwaggon to try an get public sympathy for what amounts to censorship.

I enjoyed the growth of the internet and am glad that I enjoyed the freedom and richness it bought to our lives...but the holiday is over and the people seeking to make money out of everything they do are winning the day. All the talk of funding everything from advertising with free movies, music and software for all have simply faded away. I remain convinced that a model could have been found to give the world almost completely free entertainment or at least not governed by their circumstances......it was a utopian dream

Why would anyone whine and complain about p2p getting sued, but then condone newsgroups getting sued. If you dont like or want to use them then you shouldnt. I dont think anyone has the right to complain about newsgroups unless they take a moral stance to not pirate anything themselves.

I think a lot of it is childish rivalry. If any of you whiners knew how to use a newsgroup, you might actually be pissed that they are getting sued.

Speaking in general,
Piracy has been around for centuries and will continue to go on no matter what. The only thing that has changed about piracy in the last few hundred years is the form of punishment. Back then they used to hang you at the gallows, impale you with a sword, etcetera you get the point by all means death. Now days they just take your money. Don’t you think if they still had the same punishment as in the old days piracy wouldn’t be as wide spread as today? No don’t think so. But anyway back to the subject on Newzbin, those complaints aren’t going to go far because if you think about it there’s to many fish to fry at bay on p2p then to worry about people way out in the ocean downloading through news groups; you get were I’m coming from? There only trying to send out a message to the news group community by trying to sue Newzbin. If this does happen I believe it will take a very long time and they will have to try real hard to succeed in doing this. And if for some reason newsgroups get some how monitored like p2p which will be a cold day in hell, people will just find another way. Just like I stated in my opening statement piracy will never stop. And for varnull:

Originally posted by varnull:

---

You will get hurt!!.. what a *.
Another little $h1t comes along and tries something eh??.. welcome to misery turdbreath.. had fun licking those a$$es today??
Whose crack did you crawl out of eh?.. newzbin baby??.. use daddys credit card to pay for it???
No worthwhile comment to make about the story??.. no.. obviously just another afterdawn (only a member.. colloquilism for dick..chopper.. penis.. old fella..) * out for a cheap shot at somebody who has an adult opinion instead of being herd mentality... One of the bastards who sexually abused me as a chile was recently arrested and jailed.. for sexually abusing me when I was 10.. NO.. for uploading images of children being sexually abused to a newsgroup.....
Insult over.. It's about time these CRIMINAL PIRATES got what is coming to them. A good suing and hammering into the ground where their greedy money grabbing and exploitation deserves.
What's lame about wanting to see who has fingers in which pot? Which vested interests and public figures will be exposed for downloading child pornography and other illegal stuff through these newsgroups.. I want to see the details.. I want to see how many senior public figures are involved and have had payoffs to look the other way all these years.

Yeah it’s disgusting how people do things in this world, no offence but you can’t go around blaming Newzbin for this. When someone robs a bank, it’s like trying to blame Smith & Wesson for robbing the bank. It’s not what you use it’s how you use it.

This message has been edited since its posting. Latest edit was made on 25 Nov 2008 @ 2:25

Every time they sue somebody, it just gives free advertising to the company they are suing. Not too many people knew about the "newsgroups", now I'm sure these companies subscriptions are going to go up. It happens all the time.