Question for those with Usenet know how. When downloading raw headers, I have observed a convention where the title is a random string of letters and numbers, and within the post are for example 50 rars and 10 pars. How are consumers 'decoding' the title so they know what they are getting? Does the uploader provide a translation? Or can the 'real title' be recovered programmatically? Many thanks.
The End: NZBMatrix closes
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Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#92Earlier quoted context omitted.
Think of it like Pirate Bay, but for newsgroups. Newsgroups are massive with some providers archiving binary groups for up to 4 years (and growing). Sites like NZBMatrix index the content and provide nzb files which tell your client what to download so that you don't have to constantly download the headers for a bunch of sites and search through them. Sites like NZBMatrix were also somewhat curated to help keep passw…
And combined with a private usenet server, it was non-P2P and relatively secure file downloading at exceedingly high speeds.
The usenet servers live on, and all the files (minus a small percentage that are the subject of takedown requests) are still there.
NZBMatrix was just one of dozens of indexing sites.
Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#93Despite being 99% illicit content, could somebody explain why this is not a case for Safe Harbour? Is this principle enshrined in any law at all, or is it just some neutrality idyll that we assume others share? *Thought it was part of the DMCA
The "safe harbor" includes more requirements than responding to take-down requests. In particular, the service provider must "not have actual knowledge that the material or an activity using the material on the system or network is infringing", and "in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent".
In other words, though you don't have an active duty to police your site, if you do become aware, and don't take action, you're not protected. Similarly, if you set up something with the sole purpose of distributing copyrighted material, and try to hide behind a "gosh, we never knew that kind of thing was going on until you told us", you're probably not going to get a court to believe you.
Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#94This is a Usenet binary sharing site whose front page, in a Usenet "video review", was a table of movies, TV shows, and video games. In other words, it wasn't even possible for the owners to look at their own site and not know that it was being used almost exclusively as a tool for piracy. Extremely common DMCA misconception: it's not enough to be "takedown compliant". That's not how the law works. You also can't eve…
Has it actually been established that merely linking to copyrighted content is illegal in the United States? I'm not trying to troll, just genuinely curious. My technical understanding of this could be incorrect, but it seems to me that there is a meaningful difference between a BitTorrent tracker actively coordinating copyright infringing downloads vs. a website like NZBMatrix hosting nothing but static links to ano…
The NET act criminalizes any willful "copyright infringement" (the term used in the act) so long as it's done for financial gain. Contributory or vicarious liability for copyright infringement for linking is well established.
At any rate, services like these rely on the DMCA Safe Harbor provision. Regardless of whether the potential liability is civil or criminal, you can't have actual knowledge of infringing activity on your site and the ability to remove that activity from your site and claim safe harbor.
Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#95Such disappointing news compounds last weeks troubles. When nzbs'r'us shutdown over similar payment problems. Payment is a huge achilles heel for these services. Blocking payments was used to hurt WikiLeaks, and Dutch usenet providers have recently lost the ability to use paypal for payments too. A popular bitcoin-esque service can't happen soon enough.
http://usenetreviewz.com/dutch-usenet-providers-banned-by-pa...
Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#96This is a major blow to usenet. But more importantly this could be the start fo something very very bad for usenet. It, and it's users of who I am sure there are plenty on HN, have so far been able to fly under the anti-piracy radar of the big media companies. This clearly demonstrates that they know exactly what is going on, and may be on the war path to shut down more indexes and search engines.
Nauseating. Piracy killed the real Usenet, and now pirates are upset that enforcement is killing the goofy little playground they built inside its corpse.
When I was 18, I ran a competitive (on the Freenix leaderboard) full-feed Usenet server for the ISP I worked at. Every ISP in the world could have provided full-feed Usenet access, but for the assholes who loaded the system down with ASCII-encoded binaries. Even while it was possible for an independent provider to offer Usenet to customers, it was still a total nightmare because of the ludicrous storage requirements for binaries, which ensured that only an ever-dwindling number of providers would take the time to offer it at all.
It's startling to me that there's a Usenet at all anymore, since it's essentially been reduced to a collaborative system for sharing pirated binaries.
Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#97MacGuffin!! Noooooooooooooooooooooo!!!!!!1
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Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#98This is a major blow to usenet. But more importantly this could be the start fo something very very bad for usenet. It, and it's users of who I am sure there are plenty on HN, have so far been able to fly under the anti-piracy radar of the big media companies. This clearly demonstrates that they know exactly what is going on, and may be on the war path to shut down more indexes and search engines.
Nauseating. Piracy killed the real Usenet, and now pirates are upset that enforcement is killing the goofy little playground they built inside its corpse. When I was 18, I ran a competitive (on the Freenix leaderboard) full-feed Usenet server for the ISP I worked at. Every ISP in the world could have provided full-feed Usenet access, but for the assholes who loaded the system down with ASCII-encoded binaries. Even wh…
I like the imagery.
So I am chuckling at the idea that some young guns who want to be "free" to do what ever they want in their network of computers to come up with a scheme where they are will use telephones to call up one computer to the next, and addressing will be free form a series of "hops" where you tell the computer what sequence of machines will have to be called in order to get your message from you to your destination. You could use a character like ! to separate the hops making an address 'bobs-machine!piratebay!alices-machine!alice' delivering through three hops to Alice.
Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#99There is NO such thing as priracy, there is only sharing of property between people. When I buy something I own it, no matter what those fools say, and when I own it, I copy it if I like!
Re: The End: NZBMatrix closes
#100you can bet your bottom this fact''Federation Against Copyright Theft Limited''will be into all nzb providers now by attacking the index list making sites like nzb matrix take down massive amounts of copyrighted movies and other copyrighted items, changes in the usenet indexing this looks bad all round for us downloading they cant get the server providers so they will go after the next best thing the index system tha…
And why aren't they able to get the server providers?