Judge throws book at Usenet.com in RIAA lawsuit
 

Some how we missed this one on GFY. (or at least I couldn't find a thread about it)

:party-smi

there was a thread about it a bit ago

hmmm....

I couldn't find it.

I like seeing all these file sharing sites get hammered. :)

Pirate Bay got the hammer. Usenet got the hammer. Just need a huge tube site to get the hammer.

fucking judges love to browse tubes,.,

could be used against one of the file sites as most of the ruling would apply.

Actually, they never got in trouble for Usenet.

They got sanctioned by the judge for destroying all of the evidence (wiping all of the hard drives on computers, servers) and sending many of their employees on an all-expenses-paid trip so that they wouldn't be able to testify.

These hard drives + the employees may have had evidence that the company was aware of the infringing activity taking place and chose to do nothing. This is a situation where the DMCA safe harbor provision will not protect you.

The RIAA asked the judge to terminate the case, and rule in their favor. But the judge decided not to grant that request. Instead, he said that Usenet wouldn't be allowed to assert a specific defense (that they were protected by the DMCA safe harbor provision), because they destroyed the evidence that could potentially been used to refute that defense.

I think I like this Judge... :thumbsup

Time for the Copyright Laws to catch up with the Technology! :thumbsup

I don't pay hundreds of thousands of dollars to create original exclusive content for others to essentially steal / profit from it.

If our positions were reversed (if the thieves were the producer, and I was the thief), then I think it is fair to say, that they would feel the same.

ADG

Yeah right like RIAA will sue any porn tube site

I don't if its the RIAA who does it.

I don't care who it is.. I would just like to see it done.

It also looks like the judges might be looking harder at the safe harbor defense.

You can claim it, but can you prove it. Usenet could not and had to hide the evidence. the judge knew you don't wipe drives and send people abroad because you have a tight case.

DMCA needs a lot of updating for sure.

And adoption by the EU.

Its needs to be changed where one take down notice carries a wider ranger.

Making copyright owners police every uploaded instance of it is largely unfair

So, why are there not law firms jumping all over this? The biggest problem for most little guys is there is no way we can fight, be it time or money. From other threads it's shown that with time and money, great profit can actually be made going after these guys. I'm really surprised that none of the adult friendly legal firms have stepped up to provide a service directly related to this. Say, a 50/50 split of any moneys received after expenses or something. I would think that even for starting out lawyers, this would be far better than simple ambulance chasing and be able to provide a steady income.

I've posted on it in the past. the solution here is to go after the USERS uploading the content directly. You take out those users, going after them publicly and harshly and the sites they upload to will go down with them.

Once something like this matures, it really would only be a matter of time till this issue was seriously nipped in the butt.

funny, forum owners have legal immunity to what posters post, but somehowe magically Usenet is responsible for what people post. everyone in thread just go mke your netflix copy of Xmen and keep up the fight against pirates !

lolz

I nominate Guba to be next.

One is suing,different is winning case.And also some of major illegal tube sites goes legal,and you cant do much then.

No no.. it's SKIN VIDEO now.... S-K-I-N....... V-I-D-E-O..... not The Gigantic Usenet Binary Archive....

oopsie. :Oh crap

did you not read the previous posts

there is no weakening of the safe harbor provision, it a special case where they destroyed any potential proof that the safe harbor provision doesn't apply and the judge ruling you can destroy potentially incriminating evidence and use an affirmative defence at the same time. There has been similar case law around for years.

it like you can't claim self defence if scrub down all the blood evidence at the murder scene destroy the murder weapon and melt the body with acid.

Correct:
http://www.gfy.com/fucking-around-and-business-discussion/913619-riaa-triumphs-usenet-copyright.html

You are incorrect gideon and need to read the story more closely.

The destruction of evidence and the refusal to cooperate are completely separate from the safe harbor issue.

When they tried to say that they were operating under the safe harbor position the judge on the case laughed them out of the courtroom. He felt that the manner in which they operated the site on a daily basis would not have come close to qualifying for safe harbor protection.

So now they got slammed for all the copyright violations.

Added to that were the penalties for their destruction of evidence and apparent unwillingness to cooperate when they were required to.

Not good behavior at all.

Not to put all the misunderstanding on you gideon. It looks like you may have got your information from the earlier post by wootpr0n on the issue.

From reading part of the article it sounds like they (usenet.com) got in some serious shit for promoting piracy on their service. If youtube.com basically said "hey upload and watch all the pirated shit you want, we don't care!" then google would be in some shit too.

But even if usenet.com got shutdown it wouldn't matter, they aren't the biggest usenet provider, giganews probably is.

Safe harbor defense was disallowed after a repeated pattern of evidence spoliation and stonewalling from Usenet.com.

granted it looks like they did a lot more than that, but if they had turned over the evidence and the RIAA had failed to find the proof they need, they could have used the safe harbor provision. Instead the accusation were considered to be true.

Anyway, the actions that were discussed were not covered by the safe harbor provision, being personally involved setting up servers specifically to host files are actions outside the scope of the safe harbor provision. This case didn't weaken safe harbor it is just as strong as it was before the case.

BULLSHIT!!!

Go ahead and open a forum an let the users post CP and see what happens to you.

If you think that somehow this effects usenet you are showing your ignorance


usenet.com was simply a post consolidator

going after usenet is an ENTIRELY different animal

Today I downloaded 5 recently released cd's and 3 movies that are currently in theaters...

The RIAA is really winning the war against piracy... :thumbsup

:1orglaugh

Go to wp-board.com looks like they were responsible

What are you waiting for then? I would like to see it done as well.

gideon why are you always sticking up for these type of people, you are in an industry with people who are in pain cause of safe harbour, its like you want to promote piracy

That sucks for them.

As an affiliate I have no recourse for action..

what is your excuse?

Actually, I read the entire 30+ page decision a few weeks ago.

So what I said still stands.

Safe harbor ONLY applies if you are UNAWARE OF INFRINGING ACTIVITY. Once you become aware of infringing activity, you have to control it or you can become liable.

So Usenet wanted to say that they were UNAWARE, but then the RIAA wanted evidence of their hard drives + employee depositions to prove that they were fully AWARE. When they destroyed this evidence and sent their employees on trips, the judge had to sanction them. Otherwise Usenet would be able to make the argument under safe harbor provisions and the RIAA wouldn't have any evidence to refute that.

There was a lot of evidence that they were aware of the infringing activity including:

-Advertisments on their site that encouraged users to download music
-Advertisments about how they were better than Napster (and a court had ruled that Napster was engaged in copyright infringement)
-Usenet allocated a disproportionately higher amount of server space for music files and music groups, so that music files would be available for longer periods of time. Recall that Usenet providers delete the older posts every day to make space for newer stuff.
-In many cases, the employees were bragging via internal e-mail about the availability of infringing music
-In many cases, tech support was assisting Usenet subscribers to download infringing music files
-Usenet was aware that most of their users were downloading infringing music files, and they had server logs to demonstrate this fact

The RIAA was aware of all that evidence of all of these activities existed on the hard drives of their computers and servers and that Usenet employees could testify to this effect. So when Usenet destroyed the evidence, and then attempted to argue that they didn't know what was going on, the RIAA would not get a fair trial. That is why the judge sanctioned them, telling them that they cannot argue that they were unaware. This is supposed to level the playing field.

But of course, now the RIAA has practically no proof that anything happened. The RIAA can make the argument that there was infringing activity, and that Usenet knowingly contributed to it.

Usenet CAN'T make the argument that they didn't know about the infringing activities, but they CAN make the argument that the infringing activities never took place. And the RIAA doesn't have much proof.

If you must know, this judge (Harold Baer) crafted the decision like this on purpose. He has a history of hating lawyers, and copyright law, and especially police.

Also, the article is misleading. The Judge did not find Usenet "liable" for anything, because the case wasn't terminated.

There was no summary judgement, no default judgement, no dismissal, no consent injunction.

He just decided that they couldn't make a specific defense in the trial.

Now that I think about it, the judge really was light on them.

In the TorrentSpy lawsuit, they deleted a bunch of forum posts, and even though the MPAA was already given tons of evidence, the judge gave them a default judgement (terminating sanctions).

i wish no one can touch pirates!,

Let's fight ;)

Judges are changing the goal posts. If a prosecutor can show the safe harbor is not as tight as the defense claims. They can be asked to prove it. Once the defense evades the question, destroys evidence it's very much case over.

And there is the biggest problem for the porn industry.

Since day 1 of selling to the Internet, early to mid 90s I think, the cry has been "Too much free porn on the Internet." And it has grown in record numbers ever since then.

Here's what will happen if it's possible to crack down on illegal Tubes.

Some will go legal, the rest will close. The surfers on those that close will to those that go legal. Some will also move over to Tubes that are supported by sponsors giving out 6 minute clips. The big full scene Tubes might not be as big. What ever, lost customers will not turn back to buying.

While Tubes are supported by adverts to dating and webcam sites they make a profit. While they offer a better deal to the lost customers they will stay where they are.

Will the porn industry come together and do what the RIAA have done?

Who believes that?

Until we break the profit margins on Tubes, they will stay and will keep and entice our lost customers away.

or that the infringing activity was not infringing because of fair use

ie the person downloading the song was simple recovering a song they already bought.

did you even read the ruling

destroying evidence in a discovery has always been illegal/sactionable

your trying to argue that they can it changed by adding the ability to just ask for proof.

The burden of proof is not on the defendants side, they can claim they were unaware until the procecution/complaintant finds the proof.

nothing has changed paul no matter how much you want it too.

after the google/viacomm release of info ruling that torrentspy got a lot of flack for his decision by privacy groups, who could point to the redacted info ruling made by a capable judge.

judges don't like to have a permenent our and idiot stamp on their record, so they rule a little more carefully.

Are you on any sort of medication, hallucinating drugs, drunk or just stupid?

I would love to see the down loader who adopts that defense. Especially one who can produce his hard drive.

i suggest you look up the case law, the riaa has already ceded the point that recovery from p2p is not illegal. Even in the cases that the won when the defendent produced evidence that they bought the song they excluded them from the list of infringements.

They don't want to fight on that bases, knowing that if they lose bit torrent would be come as legal as vcr.

and providing the service would be as legal as walmart selling vcrs.

I would so hope that RIAA actually fights such a case, in front of a jury.

All they would do is ask the defendant to produce proof they had bought the original copy of the music. How many down loaders do you think can do that? The ones down loading hundreds of titles wold ever have a chance.

The table is turning. Too slowly but still turning.

well said

well people like me (canadians) could pull out the piracy tax info, and a reciept for blank cd and would be covered completely.

Downloaders who got caught could simply buy the cd,
scratch it up
say i don't have the reciept anymore

how could you prove when i bought the cd

as for downloading tv shows, i have done it myself, my cable bill, a copy of the tv guide schedule from the day in question and a copy of the supreme court ruling that copyright laws don't fair use copy illegal just because the SOURCE is illegal is enough.

Your grasping at straws if you think this changes anything. if the judge had ruled in their allowed them to make the safe harbor provision defense and allowed them to destroy the evidence that would have been a game changer.

This is just status quo of any other destruction of evidence case with an affirmative defence, weather it be murder, or piracy case it doesn't matter destroying the evidence that could prove your affirmative defence is a lie denies you the right to make that affirmative defence.

So the guy downloading 100s of CDs and perhaps just single tracks has to go out and buy 100s of CDs, scratch them all and claim he was just replacing what he bought?

You are more stupid than I thought.

But maybe getting pirates to buy the CDs they stole is a good way for the music industry to boost it's turnover. :1orglaugh

please you do realize that DMCA makes you responsible for all expenses regarding a false claim.

I could send you a bill at my hourly rate for the time i spent searching thru my collection.

and the scratched cd would just be an example.

you could buy the cd take the cover say you "lost" the cd, sell the cd to a second hand store.
you could borrow the cd from the library scan the cover claim you started doing that since a girl lost her house based on a threat and wanted to have a proof of backup ...

there are dozen of ways i could "pretend" this was for recovery.

it would cost you thousands to get maybe pennies for the sale.

hell you could even borrow the cd covers from friends and claim that you lost the actual cd.

You must stop trying to look stupid.

Only if I lose and only after wards. You would be risking thousands on a defense that coud easily be shown to be lies.

Your defense is going to get laughed out of court and you would be torn to shreds by a prosecuting attorney and could be found guilty of perjury. Stop trying to look stupid.

Now please as you're going down such a stupid road I will leave you to your fantasies.