News - Sky now blocking Newzbin2

[HEXUS]

Sky users lost the Newzbin2 website as of Dec 15th. Happy Christmas from Sky.

Read more.

[Repressor]

Is this the "block" that can be by-passed by using https? Laughable really...

[bridges009]

Murdoch company in IP coddling shock!

[Hoonigan]

IMO, Sky do have some vested interest in protecting the copyright of music and movies, otherwise some people aren't going to invest into their Box Office, Movies packs or music channels.

Although, I am glad I'm not part of Sky's IP anymore, even though I don't use Newzbin, what else might get blocked in the future?

[Saracen]

It's perhaps one thing to heed court decisions, but it's another to rub salt into the wounds when supporting a legal case that could set a dangerous precedent for site and service blocking in the future.

Oh, really?

Let's be clear about this. It's been before the courts, and the ruling was that Newzbin, of whatever number, was clearly facilitating, on a large scale, copyright infringement. It was ruled that the site owners claims that they did not know were "simply not credible". It was not entirely unreasonable to conclude that the primary purpose was to facilitate copyright infringement.

The site then moves offshore, hides it's ownership and management, and carries on doing exactly the same thing, in a clear and overly deliberate attempt to avoid, whether they agree with it or not, a court judgement.

Why is it a "dangerous precedent" for a court to order blocking of a site that's got breaking the law as a core function, or perhaps the prime purpose, of it's existence?

We have laws for a reason, and in this case, it's to protect industries and people's living and employment, all of which piracy is a serious threat to.

If I set up a website, copied all of HEXUS content and made it freely available, and you lost your job as a result, would you be happy? Or would you expect HEXUS to seek to protect it's copyright? Through a court, if necessary. I would point it is serious hypocrisy to expect your own copyright to be protected, and to then to support the breaching of someone else's.

Sky are enforcing a court order. And as it happens, they support it. So do I, not least as someone that expects my copyright to be respected, and that has had occasion in the past to threaten legal action when it was breached, by a UK publisher (and a wealthy one at that) using material without either permission or recompense. As it happens, it was quickly acknowledged as a mistake and recompense was forthcoming. But it was only forthcoming because the legal system clearly backed copyright.

It is not rubbing salt into wounds to expect major corporates to comply with court orders, and gladly, when it's respecting the rights of others to earn a living, In fact, for all Sky's numerous faults, it's refreshing to see then actually take a stand. They've gone up in my estimation, not because they took action but because of their attitude over it ... .though frankly, going up isn't hard when you've no further to go down.

[cptwhite_uk]

The trouble is piracy is simply more flexible than any legal system that is in place right now for distributing content. I was at a LAN party a few weeks ago and was shown a series of programs that downloaded illegal content for you you could filter by:

Series
Category
Metacritic score
IMDB score
Format (avi.)
Display Size (480p, 720p, 1080p etc.)
File sze
Source - DVDrip / Cam / Full official DVD / Blu-ray rip etc.
Genre

Also set what time of day it would perform downloading (i.e. early hours etc.)
Programs were automatically downloaded as soon as they became available to a NAS storage device

It was simply the ultimate illiegal PVR essentially, and quite frankly, it was an excellent system. Yet there's no legal alternative, this is the world in which we live, and the broadcasting giants need to understand this. Region specific anything is from a bygone age, forget it. Once it's shown anywhere you can bet I will be able to download it illegally within a couple of hours if I so wished, they need to understand that simultaneous worldwide release is the only plausible system now.

I'm still waiting for a system like this to be implemented legally with a subscription charge. They need to offer a comparable service what I've outlined above. But it's going to be a long time coming, and until they catch up piracy will be very healthy regardless of their efforts.

[mikerr]

I'm still waiting for a system like this to be implemented legally with a subscription charge. They need to offer a comparable service what I've outlined above. But it's going to be a long time coming, and until they catch up piracy will be very healthy regardless of their efforts.

No matter what they charge it would be considerably more than free, so people will continue to pirate IMO.

BTW Isn't there already a better system currently implemented called "subscription TV with a PVR and on-demand"
-no need to wait overnight either -its just that the costs are high.

Is it really just that you want unlimited content per month for a ridiculously low fee ?
sky TV packages can get to £100/month for the same content many pirate for free.

That said, for music spotify has pretty much killed my use of mp3s - I happily pay for premium,
so its advert free and allows offline use on iphone etc.

[kasavien]

There's a case for both the arguments above. some tv series aren't made available quickly enough in a downloadable format. I don't have a tv license because I choose and pay for exactly what I want to watch, but in having to wait long periods of time for some series. The case in point being the walking dead, which as far as I know isn't available to rent as a download yet. On the other side of things, sky for example have caught up. I very much enjoyed watching game of thrones on sky player as ot was aired this year. I just wish things were this good for all shows.

[Scribe]

Oh, really?

Let's be clear about this. It's been before the courts, and the ruling was that Newzbin, of whatever number, was clearly facilitating, on a large scale, copyright infringement. It was ruled that the site owners claims that they did not know were "simply not credible". It was not entirely unreasonable to conclude that the primary purpose was to facilitate copyright infringement.

The site then moves offshore, hides it's ownership and management, and carries on doing exactly the same thing, in a clear and overly deliberate attempt to avoid, whether they agree with it or not, a court judgement.

Why is it a "dangerous precedent" for a court to order blocking of a site that's got breaking the law as a core function, or perhaps the prime purpose, of it's existence?

We have laws for a reason, and in this case, it's to protect industries and people's living and employment, all of which piracy is a serious threat to.

If I set up a website, copied all of HEXUS content and made it freely available, and you lost your job as a result, would you be happy? Or would you expect HEXUS to seek to protect it's copyright? Through a court, if necessary. I would point it is serious hypocrisy to expect your own copyright to be protected, and to then to support the breaching of someone else's.

Sky are enforcing a court order. And as it happens, they support it. So do I, not least as someone that expects my copyright to be respected, and that has had occasion in the past to threaten legal action when it was breached, by a UK publisher (and a wealthy one at that) using material without either permission or recompense. As it happens, it was quickly acknowledged as a mistake and recompense was forthcoming. But it was only forthcoming because the legal system clearly backed copyright.

It is not rubbing salt into wounds to expect major corporates to comply with court orders, and gladly, when it's respecting the rights of others to earn a living, In fact, for all Sky's numerous faults, it's refreshing to see then actually take a stand. They've gone up in my estimation, not because they took action but because of their attitude over it ... .though frankly, going up isn't hard when you've no further to go down.

On the contrary, Newzbin2 began by implementing a properly functioning content take-down request service (issue number one in the original case) and would likely have been up for negotiation regarding what content they report in detail beyond simple indexing (issue number two), however they were never approached on this. Instead courts treated the site as the same legal entity, which it was not and passed on and extended from the judgement of the previous case, which is a questionable legal act. Newzbin original had not been ordered for blockage by the courts, only to resolve these issues but claimed bankruptcy from the running costs of the proceedings.

We do have laws for a reason but as can be read in recent EU cases on copyright matters, it is not so clean cut, blocking an indexing site violates other laws put in place for equally responsible reasons and it is the duty of the courts to strike a balance until a more suitable and bespoke law is in place, currently there isn't, given the questionable proceedings that took place that I detailed above, this decision is always to be one of controversy.

The blocking is a dangerous precedent as NewzBin, whilst biasing towards user friendly reports of TV and Movie content, is simply an indexing site for Usenet, a service widely used for both legal and illegal usage, just like any other open service. It has become popular for illegal content because of its exceptional performance and privacy as a service, so the service should die for being a good service? We'll keep having to block the best services until user choice is diminished? We accept that suppression of legal traffic is a fair collateral of a larger corporation's copyright pursuit? Likewise, court decisions in future cases are formed from law and in the absence of, case law, which will derive its decisions from the NewzBin block case which suggests it's ok to ignore proper proceedings, that legal traffic is an acceptable collateral and that concerns relating to costs of blocking implementation and risk of blocking 100% legal websites may be ignored. Each new case will be derivative and setting a precedent like this one has historically allowed future rulings to creep away from the intent of the original case, much like Chinese whispers.

There already are plenty of websites that copy HEXUS content, in fact we seek them out because they generate us hits. People think, who is that author, what's this source site? Sure someone may chose to mirror the entire site, adjust links and pretend to be us but that's more an issue of identity theft and not comparable to movie or music theft, we all know who and where such content really comes from, likewise, you could try to copy HEXUS but HEXUS.net will always post first, we'll always show up on Google first as our stories are indexed first and people will come to us for these legitimate reasons.

Likewise, with music and movies, the corporate notion of copyright theft and the damages it does assumes the perfect model of society, it doesn't take into account limited spending capabilities of customers, customers who try before they buy, deferred spending, subjective worth of artistic content, PR and spread enabled by a portion illegal downloading, inferior content delivery systems and pricing structures etc. Moderate surveys suggest that losses from piracy are much less than those claimed by media firms and that truthfully the model is too complex to state facts with guarantee, other surveys show evidence that piracy boosts income for media.

What I dislike about this case is that decisions are based on assumptions, incomplete and flawed survey data, which, when weighing up against suppressing legal usage, possibly in the future free speech, harming usenet, ISP and consumers both functionally and monetarily, how dare someone make a decision not really knowing the true balance that they're striking.

In a sub-context, the idea of copyright theft for those on low-incomes who may purchase what they can but then wish for access to more content as it forms part of social discussions and interactions further enforces class restrictions and reminds me of the darker side of capitalist society.

By the way, despite my less than moderate net earnings, I am one of those who shells out £100 a month to Sky (amongst most others as Sky is effectively blocking the site from its own content funders), has a subscription to a legal anime streaming service and until recently held an unlimited cinema card (haven't had enough time to make it worth my while lately!). That's a ridiculously large amount of money for me, but I still feel very ill towards the case in general.

[Noli]

No matter what they charge it would be considerably more than free, so people will continue to pirate IMO.

Normally I'd agree but I think the example of Steam somewhat disproves this argument. I've got friends who used to download all games but now pay for all/most via Steam because it's easier. This backs up cptwhite_uk's point that it is about the implementation as much as the cost. Your own example of spotify also adds evidence (many people happy to pay when could get free music).

[Golden Dragoon]

Not sure that Sky's blocking is that effective, I am on sky and having never visited or used newzbin I was able to type it in the address bar and go there right away, no errors, and no message from sky.

[kopite]

I`m on sky and am unable to get to it. Looks like they`ve blocked ip address As I`ve changed my dns to opendns and couldnt access it that way either.

nzbmatrix it is then

[Agent]

It's just a stupid situation when you can Google 'bypassing newzbin block' and find out in seconds.

I can't see how this is going to make any real difference.

[Barrichello]

By the way, despite my less than moderate net earnings, I am one of those who shells out £100 a month to Sky

Not had Sky for many years (since leaving parents) is it really that expensive now? wow

[spoon_]

Not had Sky for many years (since leaving parents) is it really that expensive now? wow

Hmm I bet my money that's the full package including movies and sport channels? Also internet and a phone line most likely...

[Scribe]

Hmm I bet my money that's the full package including movies and sport channels? Also internet and a phone line most likely...

Indeed!