Huge Anti-Piracy Push By MPAA

**Jared Moya** · February 24th, 2006, 03:05 AM

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is steamrolling across the great indexing plains. Tuesday brought news the eDonkey2000 indexing server Razorback2 was taken offline by Belgian Police, in conjunction with the MPAA. Today, the MPAA has announced a tremendous escalation in their fight against online piracy - this time targeting BitTorrent, eDonkey2000 and Newsgroup NZB indexing sites.

Specifically, seven lawsuits were filed in Federal Court across the United States. Most remarkable of these lawsuits was the MPAA's strategy to target Newsgroup NZB indexing sites. Newsgroup indexing sites function much differently than eDonkey2000 or BitTorrent sites, as their role is to supply "NZB" or Newzbin files. These NZB files greatly simplify the task of downloading material from the Newsgroups. It eliminates the once lengthy process of digging through multiple groups and headers to find the desired archive.

Because of the Newsgroups' long standing reputation of being a legitimate online source of information and community interaction, such associated indexing sites were considered immune from prosecution. Today's action dismisses this notion.

Read the complete article

**TOrn_sOuL** · February 24th, 2006, 05:08 AM

I can see the MPAA targeting eDonkey (which they did), I can see them trying to target bit torrent (and they still try)... However, when they try to target newsgroups... they are just wasting their time...

Newsgroups alter the data so that they don't share the actual material, the user alters the data back to get a pirated material...

so, their lawsuits probably won't hold up in court, unless they continue to payoff everyone as they always do...

**phalkon30** · February 24th, 2006, 06:41 AM

According to another source (something I found on another site), "The full list of sites sued Thursday include Torrentspy.com, IsoHunt, BTHub.com, TorrentBox.com, NiteShadow.com, Ed2k-It.com, NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net"

**mountain_rage** · February 24th, 2006, 07:38 AM

They wont win their newsgroup lawsuit, newsgroups have just as legit material as most internet search engines carry. Also alot of the information they index is legal.

I also find it interesting that any company can be sued for these reasons. Ive never heard of someone being sued for giving someone the name of a drug dealer, black market seller etc..

**Afn** · February 24th, 2006, 08:39 AM

They could win on contribitory infringment. The riaa and mpaa are like large dinosaurs, they are slow, stupid, but in the end they get what they want. Even if they re-write the laws to serve industry greed and fuel a copyright backlash that creates a political movement that will lead to copyright as a device of human control and corporate profitablity.

The copyright wars need to end, ant not end with the evil empire buying the process and eliminating legitimate uses and eduicational uses because, some where, some one is going to may a copy of star wars, and bring down the empire.

A new political party is needed to address the growing corporate and fascist worldview where some citizens can live like kings and others die because of lack of access.

**icebox** · February 24th, 2006, 04:41 PM

They'll win the fight against NZB, because NZB is all about binaries, 99% of which are copyrighted. They're not saying the usenet itself is all about infringement, only nzb. And even though NZB isn't sharing the actual material, they are assisting in the process, which is enough under current law.

**brock01** · February 24th, 2006, 07:10 PM

that sucks man, bt should last a while though, so many sites and stuff

horrible to hear that iso and torrentspy got shut down from waht phalkon said

**brock01** · February 24th, 2006, 07:12 PM

As Reported Everywhere, MPAA issued a press release that thay are now suing isoHunt.com, TorrentBox.com, and a number of other BitTorrent, eDonkey and Newsgroup indexing sites. I still have yet to receive a formal cease and desist letter directly from MPAA Legal, but all seems to indicate this is for real and it's only a matter of time.

This is somewhat a followup to the series of MPAA letters we've received a year ago.

At this point, it is still uncertain what they are actually suing us for, considering we have a thorough copyright policy outlining our stance and takedown procedures. It is sad that despite our best efforts in helping out copyright owners, in both disabling copyright infringing links to their works everyday while for others, helping them distribute their works globally and cheaply using P2P technologies, it is still not enough for the MPAA. Have they ever learned from the VCR or Napster? When will corporations stop fighting technology and learn to embrace it?

To this end, us, isoHunt.com and TorrentBox.com, are forming a coalition together with other P2P operators being sued and yet to be sued, and if possible with the help of the EFF, we will fight for the right for technological progress and the legality of the search engine itself. It is too early right now to say what we need for help from you, but if the MPAA will not back down, I'm sure we are going to need your help. And no, we will not go the way of LokiTorrent or Suprnova.

Anyways, nobody panic, and let the torrents flow. If you like to talk to us live and chat with other fellows in the community, come chat on IRC on #isoHunt on P2P-IRC (SSL enabled on port 7000, you need an IRC client like mIRC ). We'll update as we learn more.

**TOrn_sOuL** · February 24th, 2006, 08:05 PM

Originally Posted by brock01

horrible to hear that iso and torrentspy got shut down from waht phalkon said

Naaa, torrentspy and iso hunt are simply torrent search engines, they host no copyright infringing material of their own... There's no way that the Mpaa could hold that up in court, i'm a big fan of those guys ;)

Besides, if they did end up suing torrentspy for being a torrent search engine... imagine how many other companies they could get away with suing for providing information (ex... Google)

theres no way, they could possibly fight a giant like that....

**axlman** · February 25th, 2006, 12:24 AM

They try and try and try!!! They need to give it up! Thing is, I don't bother downloading movies for P2P or BT, etc. If there is aDVD that I want, I just spend the few bucks and rent it and do whatever! But they think that they can sue sites for providing information? It's Bullshit! They have already made their money!!!! Like video stores...The stores don't rent the movies, they have to buy the dics/tapes, etc. So therefore the MPAA has been paid already! Guess we'll see what happens! For every little site they try to shutdown, a bunch load more come online!

**axlman** · February 25th, 2006, 12:26 AM

And this little snipet was part of Yahoo's story on this issue:

Last week, a 25-year-old man was charged with copyright infringement in the U.S. after MPAA officials duped him in a chatroom into posting "Walk The Line" on a protected server they had set up. The copy of the movie had been intended for an Oscar film awards juror who failed to receive it by mail.

Hmmmm......No isn't that entrappment? Sounds like it to me!!!!