Oct 16

Newzbin Faces Legal Action

Pioneering and infamous Usenet index site, Newzbin, appears to be in quite the dilemma: a lawsuit threatening the site.

The administrators of Newzbin have made it explicitly clear that the legal complaints against them have nothing to do with their site users, and that the site users are safe and problem-free.

Newzbin Wrote:

Newzbin has recently received two serious complaints regarding the indexing we perform, and raising doubts as to its legality.

It is likely that we will in the coming weeks be presented with a court case and have to defend our rights. We will be defending ourselves vigorously against both the complainants if necessary and we believe a court will agree with our view that linking to content on Usenet is indeed legal and our method of dealing with unlawful content is appropriate. We believe that, or we wouldn’t still be here.

We are not in a position to disclose the identities of these two complainants (though I’m sure you can guess one of them) but we will report more as we can.

These cases are against us, not you. Having an account on Newzbin is not going to be a problem for you.

So, basically, if you start seeing press releases that legal action is commencing against us, don’t be alarmed – we know, and indeed it’s a good thing that we’re getting these issues laid to rest.

Remember these things take time however, so it’s unlikely we’ll have further news for another few weeks – please don’t hassle us for information, we will give you it when we have it.

What implications could this lawsuit have on newsgroup usage and other NZB sites? Have your say in the comments at the NZB Blog at NZBTrader.org