NZBmatrix closes doors due to takedown notices

One of the scenes biggest newsgroup indexing sites NBZmatrix have closed their services. They posted on their homepage

“The End…

It is with our regret to announce that NZBMATRIX has closed.

We have had to make this decision due to a very large takedown request from a company called Wiggin LLC. These represent the following: Federation Against Copyright Theft Limited (“FACT”), Paramount Home Entertainment International Limited; Sony Pictures Home Entertainment Limited; The Walt Disney Company Limited; Twentieth Century Fox Film Company Limited; Universal Pictures (UK) Limited; Warner Bros. Entertainment UK Limited.

As everyone is aware we are DMCA/Takedown notice compliant, and always have been.
Once this notice is completed we are left with an impossible task of policing our indexing bots.  Even then it won't stop there, there will be follow-up notices etc.

Coupled with this is problems with payment providers, we have been through pretty much everyone out there, in the end they all pull out.
There are massive server/bandwidth costs to pay, with the payments in-stability this is a very hard task.

NZBMATRIX has never been the subject of any legal issues or threats.

Also the Usenet Indexing scene is going through some changes, with content being removed from pretty much every provider its making the existence of an indexer irrelevant if the content does not even exists anymore.

So it's time for us to bow out…”

2012 has been a tough year for Usenet services. Copyright holders are increasing their DMCA takedown notices they send out to indexing and hosting services. Additionally payment providers such as Paypal are placing bans on Usenet related sites for fear of piracy concerns.

Newzbin 2 stopped their services at the end of last month and NZBMatrix has followed suit.

A takedown notice isn't the end of a website, but NZBMatrix seem to have experiences issues dealing with an automated process and they couldn't keep up anymore with the notices.

Kitguru says: Newsgroup indexing providers are under watch, and many are shutting down voluntarily for fear of reprisal.

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