RIAA in ‘haven’t a clue’ shocker – Newzbin 2 to open

KitGuru recently reported on the closure, then quick reopening of Bittorrent tracking site Pirates Bay. Another similar situation has happened this week after a long drawn out court case against popular newsgroup search provider Newzbin.

After many months battling against the authorities Newzbin finally closed their doors, linking out to a blog page with details on the closure and possible future events.

Now when I say ‘future events' it appears that the source code that powered Newzbin has in fact been stolen which is going to open up the doors (web pages) to various copy cat sites across the globe. Many people are of course assuming this leak was in fact planned and is more a ‘fingers up' at the authorities than a genuine reason. Come on, it is hard not to at least chuckle.

Newzbin was hit by UK courts for ‘enabling copyright infringement' regardless of claims that they were merely acting as ‘Google for Usenet'. Newzbin hosted no content of their own, but instead offered search results and NZB files which would allow various newsgroup readers to download  material – by merely clicking a button on screen.

Movie companies came down hard on Newzbin and with huge teams of lawyers they sued the site in London. Mr Justice Kitchin handed down his verdict in March: Newzbin was liable for infringement. This was the beginning of the end.

Newzbin apparently owed £230,000 in debts to the movie studios and over half a million to a development house – details of which are scarce. Infamous underground Newzbin admin Caesium then confirmed that the source code for the site had been stolen and was adamant that he had nothing to do with it.

Newzbin account owners received an email today saying “Good news: we are Newzbin Two, and we have glad tidings:

NEWZBIN IS BACK! and we are the new management. The crew got most of the original Newzbin source code and the main databases. We loved it too much to let it die.”

The RIAA yet again prove that they really don't have a clue how to deal with these sites – the demand is much too high and once they are closed they just move location and reopen.

KitGuru Says: While there is WWW there will be illegal downloading. Its just the nature of the beast.

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