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Posted by Joe Gillis on 03/11/06 23:36
http://www.boston.com/business/technology/articles/2006/03/09/little_used_corner_of_net_becomes_piracy_battlefield/?page=2
Little-used corner of Net becomes piracy battlefield
Movie industry sues companies that aid downloads on Usenet
By Hiawatha Bray, Globe Staff | March 9, 2006
An obscure data network technology called the Usenet has become the
newest battleground between the entertainment industry and digital
music and movie pirates.
Late last month, the Motion Picture Association of America filed its
first-ever lawsuits against Internet companies that help people
download illegally copied films over the Usenet. The association says
that the companies, NZB-Zone, BinNews, and DVDRS, provide a Google-like
search service for Usenet, one that lets its users find thousands of
pirated films, including recent hits such as ''King Kong," ''The
Chronicles of Narnia," and ''The 40-Year-Old Virgin."
The three companies did not respond to e-mail messages requesting
comment. Their websites do not list physical addresses or phone
numbers, and one of them, DVDRS, has apparently been shut down. Even
the lawsuits filed against the companies identify them as John Does,
and do not include contact information.
A successful action against the three firms could lead to more lawsuits
against other Usenet index sites, such as Newzbin.com and Nfonews.com.
''A common misconception among people who use networks like these is
that they're in a group that is above the law," said movie industry
association spokeswoman Kori Bernards. Indeed, she said the popularity
of the Usenet as a place to swap illegal files has grown recently,
perhaps because the music and movie industries have successfully shut
down several distributors of peer-to-peer software, the most popular
means of file swapping.
In a peer-to-peer system, users run software that links their computers
to thousands of others on the Internet. The users can then search each
other's computers for desirable files, and download the ones they want.
But it's relatively easy to identify people using such software,
because each computer must reveal its unique Internet address.
Entertainment industry investigators can simply join the file-sharing
network, then record the addresses of all the other machines. Armed
with this information, investigators have sued thousands of people for
downloading files illegally.
In addition, the entertainment industry last year won a major victory
at the US Supreme Court, which held that companies that distribute
file-swapping software can be held liable for encouraging people to
break copyright law. Since then, several major peer-to-peer software
distributors have shut down, including Grokster, WinMX, and i2hub.
Meanwhile, huge numbers of illegal video and music files are traded
every day on the Usenet. Invented in 1980 at the University of North
Carolina and Duke University, Usenet is like a giant bulletin board,
featuring tens of thousands of ''newsgroups," each devoted to a
particular subject, such as baseball, computer gaming, or anthropology.
Originally separate from the Internet, the Usenet is still not as fully
integrated into the network as e-mail or the World Wide Web. Many
Usenet bulletin boards can be accessed through the Google search
service, which maintains an index of Usenet messages. Internet
companies like Verizon Communications Inc. provide their customers with
Usenet access at no additional charge. However, America's biggest
Internet provider, AOL, stopped offering Usenet access last year.
The Usenet also has long been a center for illegal file swapping. The
Usenet accepts only files of a limited size, written in plain text. But
programmers wrote software that would take any kind of file, translate
it into strings of text, and chop the strings into thousands of
separate files. A downloader collects these files, and uses another
program to turn them back into music, movies, or pirated software.
Usenet also offers the downloader an extra measure of privacy, because
the Internet address of his machine is known only to the Usenet server
and can't be intercepted by investigators.
The Usenet has long been one of the primary sources for the illegal
files found through peer-to-peer services, according to Eric Garland,
chief executive of BigChampagne Media Measurement, a Los Angeles
company that tracks illegal file downloads.
Garland compared Hollywood's attack on the Usenet companies to ''a
strategic strike to cut off the supply, like a drug cartel. This is top
of the food chain stuff."
Until now, it's been relatively difficult for ordinary Internet users
to get at illegal Usenet files. They aren't indexed by Google, and
downloading them is often a slow, painstaking process.
The three companies being sued by the movie industry use a technology
that goes a long way toward solving this problem. The sites don't
actually store illegal files. Instead, they offer indexes of the files
based on NZB, a new search technology. NZB identifies and indexes
millions of individual Usenet postings, sorting them into thousands of
music and movie files. A visitor to one of the sites can type in the
name of a movie and quickly get a list of the Usenet postings he must
download. With software available at low cost over the Internet, a user
can then connect to his Usenet account and easily download and
reassemble the messages into a viewable movie.
The rise of NZB has attracted file downloaders like ''Frew," the
Internet chatroom nickname of a 21-year-old network administrator in
Tampa Bay, Fla. ''I have used newsgroups for a long while, but just
started using NZBs to make things much easier about three months ago,"
wrote Frew, who didn't want to be identified for fear of prosecution.
So far, Frew has downloaded ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,"
''Jarhead," ''Flightplan," ''Full Metal Jacket," and ''Top Gun," among
others. Frew said that he felt safe doing his downloads on Usenet,
because unlike peer-to-peer systems, it's hard for investigators to
identify the individual downloaders. ''The servers I use do not monitor
what files you download," Frew wrote.
James Toledano, director of digital music at SafeNet Inc. in
Morristown, N.J., said that Usenet trading of illegal files hasn't
become a a large-scale problem yet. ''It is pretty small, but it's
growing," Toledano said. One reason is that NZB downloading isn't free.
The NZB search sites charge membership fees -- Binnews.com charges
$5.50 a month, for instance. By contrast, peer-to-peer systems are free.
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