[Jenn]

http://www.wired.com/politics/law/ne...10/riaa_usenet

RIAA Sues Usenet, Decries it as 'Brazen Outlaw'
By David Kravets 10.16.07 | 4:00 PM
The Recording Industry Association of America's litigation strategy is
taking a detour into the internet's Precambrian layer, suing a company
that distributes the ancient decentralized message board known as
Usenet.
Fargo, North Dakota-based Usenet.com is the target of the lawsuit
(.pdf) filed in U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New
York, in which 14 recording companies allege the service "enables and
encourages its customers to reproduce and distribute millions of
infringing copies of Plaintiff's valuable copyrighted sound
recordings."
The suit, filed Friday, is something of a throwback in the RIAA's
recent litigation strategy. It targets an alleged facilitator of
copyright theft instead of an individual pirate.
"They started by going after Napster, Aimster, Grokster, and after
that they said, 'We're gonna go after individuals to see if we (can)
get into the psyche of people that peer-to-peer file sharing is
wrong,'" says Washington, D.C.-based copyright attorney Ross
Dannenberg. "Now it has come full circle. Throughout this cycle,
(Usenet) newsgroups have been ignored."
In the past four years, the RIAA has sued more than 20,000 people on
allegations of copyright infringement. Two weeks ago, the association
won a $222,000 judgment in the first such case to go to trial.
But Usenet's decentralized architecture means RIAA gumshoes can't
easily trace uploaders, as they can on peer-to-peer services like
Kazaa. That may have prompted the RIAA to focus on feed provider
Usenet.com, which boasts about the anonymity it provides users.
"Shh ... quiet! We believe it's no one's business but your own what
you do on the internet or in Usenet! We don't log your activity. We
don't track your downloads," the company says on its website. It also
offers an encrypted tunneling service, for an additional fee, to
frustrate any efforts by ISPs or corporate network administrators to
police downloads.
The Usenet network is a global, distributed message-board network that
was created in the pre-internet days, when it relied on dialup modems
for distribution. Now it's carried over the internet. Usenet.com
redistributes the full Usenet feed for a subscription fee.
Usenet.com did not immediately return messages for comment.
Dannenberg suggests that the service could mount a defense by arguing
that it is a service provider under the Digital Millennium Copyright
Act, which would protect it from lawsuits if it responded to
individual copyright complaints.
"The defense is that you fall within the safe harbor provisions of the
DMCA," says Dannenberg. "This is material residing on a network at the
direction of the users." Dannenberg says Usenet.com could argue it
doesn't "have actual knowledge that the material is infringing, (and)
if they are notified, they remove infringing works."
RIAA spokeswoman Cara Duckworth say that Usenet.com is no different
from the peer-to-peer sites the RIAA has litigated against in the
past.
"Usenet.com has promoted and advanced an illegal business model on the
backs of the music community," Duckworth said in a statement. "It may
be theft in a slightly different online form, but the illicit business
model of usenet.com is little different than the Groksters of the
world.... This business should not be allowed to remain a brazen outlaw
that actively shirks its legal obligations."