RIAA Suing Usenet? Not A Chance

AVN has the story wrong. you can’t sue usenet, that’s like saying they are suing the world wide web usenet is a thing not a company.

who they are suing is USENET.com a provider of usenet feeds, those who understand usenet know what this means.

Usenet is like a big world wide depository for news and anything else anyone wants to put on it, it is a series of news servers that relay the posts to each other, then people who have set up  usenet access can retirieve these posts or make posts themselves.  Almost all ISPs provide usenet as part of your service but only the technically adept know how to set it up and use it. Most ISPs limit you to so much bandwidth usage on usenet as well.  Thats where companies like usenet.com come into play, they sell you unlimited usenet access to their news servers.

So you are all saying ho hum whats the big deal, i dont get it.

well consider that if its on multimedia of any kind from books on tape to pictures to music  to video to Bluray to DVD…its on usenet …. Free to download in its full digital quality and that includes every porn release the day it comes out.

So that’s why this is news for porners. Usenet.com is being sued  because it facilitates the theft of copyrighted material even though it has NO control over what people post to usenet, usenet is worldwide.

This is a test case to be sure, the courts are likely going to find that usenet falls within the safe harbor provisions of the DMCA and therefore Usenet.com (dont mix the two up like AVN did) is not liable for what is done by users of usenet.

This will be one to watch.