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stories filed under: "usenet"
Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Mon, May 18th 2009 2:55am


Filed Under:
brein, ftd, netherlands, usenet



Usenet Community Sues Anti-Piracy Group For Calling It Criminal

from the if-you-don't-pay-for-it... dept

Anti-piracy groups often have a way with massively stretching the truth when it comes to copyright law and anyone they dislike. The Dutch anti-piracy group BREIN apparently put out a wholly misleading article entitled: "You do not pay for it, it's unlawful." This line was taken from MPAA propaganda that has been sent around to public schools -- but, of course, it is wrong. There are tons of things that you don't pay for that are perfect lawful. To make matters worse, the article then accused a Dutch Usenet community called FTD of being "criminal." Knowing that it is not criminal, the group is now suing BREIN for falsely smearing its image by saying that it is criminal and for falsely portraying copyright law in the Netherlands.

9 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
Legal Issues

Legal Issues

by Mike Masnick

Tue, Oct 16th 2007 6:31pm


Filed Under:
copyright, file sharing, grokster decision, lawsuits, usenet

Companies:
riaa, usenet.com



RIAA Sues Usenet.com

from the no-joke dept

TorrentFreak points us to the news that the RIAA's latest lawsuit target is Usenet.com, a company that provides private access to Usenet (as you might expect). The RIAA's argument here is that Usenet.com falls on the wrong side of the Supreme Court's Grokster rules, which basically said that "inducing" infringement is copyright infringement itself. Whether or not Usenet.com actually induces infringement is an open question -- which is what we assume the courts will be deciding. However, if it does get anywhere, it certainly could make for an interesting test case. Part of what clouded the original Grokster ruling was that, while there clearly were non-infringing uses of Grokster, they were harder to show. When it comes to Usenet, it's quite easy to show that there is a ton of non-infringing uses for Usenet (and have been since its inception decades ago). To completely shut down a Usenet service provider for offering access to all of that may be a tougher sell.

24 Comments | Leave a Comment..

 
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