@Home Cuts Newsgroups Due to DMCA Complaints

hobb writes: "This is interesting... According to a post to athome.announce, Excite@Home is deciding to pull a bunch of newsgroups due to DMCA violations. Sure, the group names listed suggest possible violations, but it seems quite sudden. I wonder who might be pressuring them... The posting reads [...]" The posting is reproduced below. We don't have access to athome.* newsgroups from the outside world, so if any readers are @Home subscribers, feel free to comment...

Due to violations of the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) the Usenet newsgroups listed below are being discontinued from the Excite@Home news feed.

They are being removed from all of the news servers nationally ASAP.

alt.binaries.hustler
alt.binaries.playgirl
alt.binaries.penthouse
alt.binaries.movies
alt.binaries.pictures.centerfolds.playboy
alt.binaries.movies.divx
alt.binaries.movies.purity
alt.binaries.movies.shadowrealm
alt.binaries.movies.shadowrealm.repost
alt.binaries.movies.mirage-mrg

Here's why they did it

Read the Appeals Court's decision in ALS SCAN INC v REMARQ COMMUNITIES at http://laws.lp.findlaw.com/4th/001351.html [findlaw.com] and you'll see why they pulled those particular newsgroups.

If you get Web Hosting Magazine [whmag.com], I have an article in the next issue (July) about the DMCA's effects on ISPs and Hosting Services, and how they should handle DMCA complaints.

(No, I can't post a link to the story. It's a *print* magazine, and that issue isn't out yet. Sorry.)

- Robin

Re:Legality of Usenet Groups

And how did you know which groups had kiddie porn in them?

You must have been viewing them.

Which means you were downloading and looking at kiddie porn.

Which is illegal.

Catch-22.

--

blocking newsgroups flawed

The idea of "blocking a newsgroup" is appealing only to people with a flawed understanding of how the usenet works. @Home's action will only increase copyright violations.

Newsgroups are not like organizations that can be shutdown. They are not meeting spot that can be closed. A newsgroup is a higher level classification of subject than the normal subject line. That is it.

So "blocking a newsgroup" shouldn't be thought of as "shutting a newsgroup down", but rather removing a classification people can identify messages as. Making it so people can't indicate their post of "dog.jpg" is illegal bestiality by posting it to "alt.binaries.pictures.bestiality" means people looking for dog pictures for school in "alt.binaries.pictures" will end up downloading it.

So what does @homes latest actions do? It makes it so people who want to respect copyright laws won't know that a picture from "alt.binaries.erotic.pictures" violates Hustler's copyright. So now porn websites that get their content from the usenet are more likely to accidentally violate Hustler's copyright!

Ben

Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.

If my memory serves me correctly, some years ago Prodigy was sued over some defamatory content that was posted to their online service. They lost the suit primarily because the plaintiff was able to demonstrate that because Prodigy excersized some form of editorial control over their online content. The judge ruled that because Prodigy edited some their published content, they automatically assumed liability for ALL of their published content.

Go ahead, and let @Home fold like a cheap camera a few more times, bending over backwards and taking it up the ass from MPAA and RIAA. Then, someone's gonna defame someone else on their newsgroup, and @Home will get sued. They'll certainly try to claim that some act that was passed a few years ago (the name escapes me) exempted ISPs from liability for published content. But I think that by instead excersizing editorial control a succesful argument can be made that @Home has assumed the role of a publisher, like Prodigy did. They can't have it both ways: claim that they're an ISP, a passive conduct, and cannot be liable for content carried on their service, but then turn around and excersize editorial control over the same content.

It's just a matter of time before they get nailed on this.

---

Avalible NGs (as I see them)

I am currently connected via my @Home cable modem, note that I am using Shaw@Home, and as such the Usenet servers may be different:

All the above NG's are currently visible to me with the exception of

alt.binaries.hustler

It does not exist in my avalible list of groups. While this does not impact my personal life much (my favored NG would be alt.2600, not the p0rn binaries ones)Neverthless, I don't like it...

Of course now I must wonder if I should thank /. for giving me more p0rn links to peruse...

Re:what the hell does that have to with the DMCA?

Now if this really has something to do with the DMCA, would somebody kindly explain that here.

DMCA has a lot more in it than the hideous 1201(a). One of the things that it covers is liability for middlemen, it kinda replaces the old-style "common carrier" rules that used to apply to ISPs. It mostly makes sense from a someone-must-be-accountable point of view, but is a bit unpleasant because it has some guilty-until-proven-innocent thinking in it.

Basically (I'm kinda summarizing and talking out of my ass at the same time, you might want to actually look it up), if you think someone is violating your copyright, and there's some kind of server being use by the offender (in this case, NNTP servers, in other cases, it might be web servers, etc), then instead of going after the actual copyright violator, you can go after the server. Once the copyright owner tells the server owner that a violation is taking place, the server owner has to shut down the content, whether or not the act of copyright violation has actually been verified. If they don't act after being notified of the infringement, then they become liable.

Then once the alleged violator realizes that their web page has been taken down, their usenet post cancelled, etc, they can write to the server owner and say, "No, it ain't copyright violation" and then the server can start serving the content again, but now the alleged violator's ass is on the line. (Presumably, this cannot be done anonymously. The idea is that it should always be clear exactly what party is to blame, should it turn out to be actual infringement.)

Probably what happened in this case is that some porno magazine threated the ISP so the ISP pulled those groups. It's not so much a "DMCA violation" as a regular old-fashioned copyright violation, combined with a DMCA "process."

---

Re:Learn to X-post

> Hell, most of the content on those groups is pr0n site advertising anyway. ... Or so I've been told.

After many hours of careful research I can say that, yes, most of the posts to alt.binaries.* are pr0n-spam.

It was nasty work, but someone had to do it. I'm about to launch my newsreader now, to see whether the situation has changed since last night.


--

Er, they missed a hol bunch..

I don't want to ring the bel on other groups, so I won't name them ... but @Home missed a LOT of other groups that deal with he same topics... Just do a quick search on several of the topics and you'll notice a few more... Why didn't they go after those too? As long as I can keep downloading my MST3k, Duckman, Internet Slutts and other TV episodes (that I honestly can't get from where I live), then I'm happy...

Re:Whose the "bad guy"?

Unless the copyright owner places it in public domain. This is particularly true to those works made in the US before 1976, as works had to be registered to obtain copyrighted status at that time.

1337 NNTP

And 15 seconds later the following get newgrouped:

alt.binaries.hu5t13r
alt.binaries.p14yg1rl
alt.binaries.p3nth0use
alt.binaries.m0v13s
alt.binaries.pictures.centerfolds.pl4ydUUd3
alt.binaries.movies.d.i.v.x
alt.binaries.movies.pur1ty
alt.binaries.movies.sh4d0wr3alm
alt.binaries.movies.m1r4g3-mrg
alt.computers.theyll.be.suprised.to.find.it.here

The problem is that if you whack UseNet stuff where you *expect* to see it, it starts popping up where you don't expect to see it. I agree that UseNet has become a forum for sharing pR0n. Perhaps if it was a text only forum, cull MIME, UUencode and anything else that looks like it might be a binary attachment. Cull RTF and HTML formatted posts as well. Hell, at least it'd be easier to spool and read.

Does this mean if I trademark a word, I can ban its use in any online medium?

Xix.

Re:Whose the "bad guy"?

> > Just because it was made in the 60s, doesn't mean it was copyrighted.
> There is always a copyright. Always.

The original poster is correct. Up until the mid '70s, published works were required to have a copyright notice on them, or they weren't copyright. Two infamous examples of works not being copyright were Martin Luther King's "I have a dream" speech, and the early Star Trek episodes.

Martin Luther King's speech was the subject of a long battle by his family. It was apparently determined that, because copies of the text were originally distributed without a copyright notice, it was not copyright.

I don't know if the Star Trek episodes were actually the subject of a court case, but the lack of copyright on the early episodes meant that fans could scam off of thos early episodes without any fear of prosecution. This may be part of the reason for the longevity (and popularity) of the original Startrek.

(Apparently, someone at Paramount didn't think that Star Trek was going to 'fly' and so they didn't worry about putting a copyright on the early episodes. I'm sure that somebody got the cat 'O Nine Tails treatment over that omission many years later. Fans, on the other hand, are eternally grateful (or at least for the next 100 years or so).)
--

Re:What If We Agree?

And it's completely within an apartment manager's rights to only rent to white people, because scientifically statistically speaking, black people are more likely to invite trouble.

Whatever happened to "innocent until proven guilty"?
--

Re:Whose the "bad guy"?

> The sites listed almost all have copyrighted/trademark names, and indeed, are fairly self explanatory in exactly WHAT it is they are distributing.

Huh? I think we're in partial agreement, but there are some entries that confuse me.

Most of the newsgroups have copyrighted content: Hustler, Playgirl and Penthouse are copyrighted publications.

I'm damned if I know what's going on in .shadowrealm, .mirage-mrg, or .purity. I have no idea what these are for, so I won't comment.

But .divx and .movies strike me as odd. The fact that someone's encoding stuff with DivX ;-) does not imply a copyright violation. Nor does the fact that someone's posting a "movie". (Whatever happened to alt.binaries.multimedia?)

Basically, my position here is the same as with the .mp3 hierarchy:

absmp3.beatles - removable under DMCA. The owners of the Beatles' music have requested that the music not be swapped via USENET. absmp3.1960s - not removable under DMCA. Just because it was made in the 60s, doesn't mean it was copyrighted. abs.mp3 - not removable under DMCA. Just because it's an MP3 doesn't mean it's copyrighted. (Likewise, just because it's a DivX stream doesn't mean it's copyrighted.)

Personally, I see this as a potentially-good thing at least as far as the MP3 front goes -- a full USENET feed is over 250GB per day, and can saturate an OC-3. Retention at my server seems to be holding up, but propagation is slowly falling apart as transit servers drop articles on the floor. If we can cut down on the volume of 600M files being tossed around, many of which are being posted from @home users, USENET can continue to function for a little while (6-12 months) longer.

IMHO the short-term solution to binary-USENET's "a full feed is too much to manage" problem isn't to drop groups, it's for broadband providers to impose upload caps of 100-200M per day at their own NNTP server on their users. Large files would still be postable - it'd just take a little longer, and retention and propagation could improve immeasurably for everyone else.

But on purely-DMCA grounds, it looks like @home has the right idea on some groups, the wrong idea on others, and may just be confused on a few more.

Re:Uh oh

> Or you could keep using your cable company for passin' the packets, and use someone else's servers for usenet.

Problem is, that's still a helluvalotta traffic for your ISP.

Full feed - 250GB per day. Let's assume you have 10000 users downloading 100M per day out of it. That 250G transit gives your users 1 TB (1 million megabytes) of downloads in the aggregate - but the 1TB of traffic is all on your LAN, so you don't have to pay (or otherwise make nicey-nicey with your Tier-1 pier ;-) for it. You eat 250G of transit costs to grab it to your disk farm and serve it locally.

But instead the PHBs tell you to dump your USENET server. Now you've got 10000 users subscribing to a premium USENET service to slurp down the binaries. The whole damn terabyte now comes from outside your network and onto your users' drives. You pay four times as much for transit as you used to in the USENET days.

For some things (MP3s of obscure bands), it may not matter -- you won't typically have all 10000 users downloading the same stuff.

For other things (e.g., this October, when Star Wars gets DivX'ed ;-), it may make a lot of difference - everyone is gonna be after the same 600M binary, so wouldn't you rather pay the transit for it once, rather than for every user who grabs a copy?

The picture makes a lot more sense if you stop thinking of the binary part of USENET as "USENET" and start thinking of it as a very large caching server.

Prediction: Imminent death of USENET predicted within 24 hours of the release of "Star Wars". Film at... er, part of film at October, with reposts of other parts of film through November, December, and probably most of 2002.

The one they missed

They got alt.binaries.pictures.centerfolds.playboy, but they missed alt.binaries.full.post.verified.playboy :)

Mark Duell

Re:Whose the "bad guy"?

shadowrealm, mirage-mrg, and purity were all newsgroups for posting commercial movies (usually cams or screeners, an occasional dvd) by the various movie groups. divx was for posting movies encoded with the divx codec, and they were, without exception, commercial movies you would see in theaters or rent. movies was the same way, only any codec was allowed (usually the group-specific codec was allowed in the their newsgroup). Just FYI (and not that I ever used them... I heard it... from a.... "friend").

Mark Duell

Re:Out of the frying pan, and into the fire.

If my memory serves me correctly, the DMCA says if a service provider gets notified of a copyright violation and they remove the stuff, they have "safe harbor" and it is not considered editorial control.

Consider this alternative..

OK. I'm going to stick my neck out and say that this is a good thing. Now, before you press page down to get to the next post, let's take this argument through step by step. Once you hit a flaw in the flow of logic, please reply and state the point you disagree with. Any generalizations about my post will be ignored.

1) The alt.* newsgroups are maintained in a hierarchy where the front elements of the hierarchy categorize what you expect to find in the lower parts.

2) The alt.binaries.* hierarchy indicates files that have been encoded in such a manner that they are converted from high-ascii to plaintext while retaining their original data.

Given 1) and 2), we can ascertain that any posting in the alt.binaries.* newsgroups will be of some form of data (read: not discussion) nature. The only exception to this are alt.binaries.*.d newsgroups.

3) @ Home has banned a subset of alt.binaries.* newsgroups, none of which are alt.binaries.*.d

4) Of the newsgroups banned, they are all either geared towards copyrighted magazines, or deal with groups that distribute copyrighted media.

Given 1, 2, 3, 4, we can now conclude that these newsgroups were set up to SOLELY facilitate the distribution of these copyrighted items. (Again, no alt.binaries.*.d group was removed).

Where exactly is the counter-argument? How can you defend yourself against this? Your rights are not at stake when you consider points 1), 2), 3), and 4). Arguing that these groups serve a legitimate purpose is like arguing a booth on a street corner selling pirated CD's is a boon to the community because they sell matches as well.

It's ok!!

No fear compadres, I just started alt.binaries.ustlerhay, alt.binaries.oviesmay, and alt.binaries.movies.ivxday. Down with the man!

Re:Legality of Usenet Groups

In the same way you know the content of a book by reading the cover?

...which doesn't work too well for newsgroups. Sure it looks like there are nearly 300 posts in alt.binaries.pictures.erotica.unix, but when I open the newsgroup happily expecting "NAKED LINUX BOX (1/1)" and "watchmesutorootandgetnasty.mpg", instead I'm greeted with typical porn spam. Life is cruel.

Whose the "bad guy"?

The sites listed almost all have copyrighted/trademark names, and indeed, are fairly self explanatory in exactly WHAT it is they are distributing.

Technically, blocking those isn't censorship. It's simply following the law.

For the flamers out there (!gay "flamers) who think that so and so, or this and that need to "make a stand against the DMCA!!" Think about this...

A company, or individual who flaunts the law has a harder time enforcing their rights BY LAW. It's been proven. It goes something like this: if these guys had said "screw that, were not going to block it, despite the legalities of it" they may, or may not have had to go to court to defend their right. But, when/if they DID have to go to court for something else, their not wanting to follow along with the law's intent would show.

And, if by going to court, they were FORCED to pull those groups, that would set a legal precedent for EVERY ISP across the nation, and they would be forced to pull them too. It is seldom that a recent ruling is set aside for an individual.

If you want to fight the DMCA, or this, write your congressmen. Don't sit there and lament when this happens. It's not their fault, it's the fault of the American Voter, period. Use your rights. Don't expect a company to fight YOUR good fight.

krystal_blade "I want my karma back!"

Re:Soon to be banned...

And then alt.flame.spelling :)

A step in the right direction

But for all the wrong reasons.

I've thought for a long time ISPs have no business providing add-on services like usenet, e-mail, or website hosting. There are dozens, if not hundreds of alternative places to find those services.

All I want out of my ISP is to give me a connection. It pains me when I think of how much of my monthly fee is paying for those resources at my ISP that I never use. 5 free e-mail addresses? I'll have a new ISP in 12 months...I'll stick with the emails I've had for the last seven years. Free 'personal' webpage? I'll go to geocities or at least pay a few bucks. Usenet? I'm sure there are plenty of services out there.

My point is, what business does the ISP have in providing news service anyways? I'm just pissed that @home is doing it because Industry nazis are on their back, instead of doing it because it's not really their job.

Legality of Usenet Groups

In the mid 90's I worked at an ISP here in British COlumbia. We were contacted by the RCMP and told that we had to police Usenet for alt.* groups that were obvioiously child porn. We happily complied, and removed any binary groups that had kiddie porn in them. We were not threatened with legal action, it was just a friendly request that we were happy to comply with. @Home chosing to block newsgroups that pretty much flagrantly distribute copyrighted materials is not censorship. IT's @home trying to forestall legal action.

Funny thing is, I see some of the newsgroups we blocked in 95 are available on the @home news server. Havent looked to see if there is anything there..but..shudder..Yeck.

Should I be worried?

I just got on Time Warner RoadRunner... Am I missing something here? What keeps me from using a different news server?

Learn to X-post

What's the big deal? the alt.binaries.* hierarchy is huge and anything that can be found on those groups can be found on any other group. Hell, most of the content on those groups is pr0n site advertising anyway.

Or so I've been told.

Dancin Santa

Sigh.

Do yourself a favour and check your facts before shooting your mouth off. I think you need to take some time and read up on the Fair Housing Act [hud.gov] (US Title code 42, chapter 45). It explicitly prohibits discrimination in housing based on race, nationality, religon, sex, maritial status, and disabilities. The only real exemptions are private, owner occupied buildings. So for example if you are renting a spare room in your house, you may discriminate on whatever basis you like, however if you own an apartment you may not. The full text of the law can be found here [cornell.edu].

Soon to be banned...

alt.binaries.first_ammendment

alt.binaries.second_ammendment

alt.binaries.fourth_ammendment

....

Re:1337 NNTP

no.samfunn.helse.funksjonshemming.diverse

That''s a regional newsgroup. You'll also notice groups starting with fi,se,dk,de, etc. But to answer your question: no.community.health.disabilities.misc