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British Court Rules For ISP To Block Site
By Taylor Gillespie
Expert Author
Article Date: 2011-08-01
A British court ruled that the biggest British Internet Service Provider, British Telecom, to block access to Usenet binary downloading advocate site, NewzBin2. This ruling should come as no surprise for the NewsBin2 site as the British courts have been considering drastic action against them for over a year. For the courts to rule against a data aggregation service, it is an unprecedented move which puts the onus of responsibility for users' third-party actions on the web site owners. In many earlier copyright situations, for example, The Pirate Bay, have always maintained that because of the nature of Peer-to-Peer technology, the site never hosts the copyrighted files themselves. This ruling puts such sites in jeopardy.
The fact that the site is called NewzBin2 gives some hint to their history. The original site had to relocate, and start afresh with new, persecution-free owners. The as operators of NewzBin2 threaten, as reported in Tom's Guide, to disrupt British Telecom's content filtering service. The site will be filtered as would other offending sites such as child pornography. They threaten that they will break the filter to allow not on NewzBin2 sites, but also all other offending sites. Along with threatening to break British Telecoms Cleanfeed content filter, but have also offered up access through Tor, and pseudo-top-level-domains.
British Telecom contends that the operator's of NewzBin2 were aware that their userbase was using their data aggregation service that made it easy to downloaded copyrighted materials from usenet. The site themselves were not hosting Usenet, only providing easier access. Perhaps the issue is easier to frame when the fact that NewzBin2 charged for access to the data on downloading copyrighted materials. That they were monetarily gaining from easier dissemination of copyrighted materials that made the site an unprecedented target. The Motion Picture Association and various content producers will no doubt attempt to leverage the ruling across the Internet. But then, the responsibility for blocking copyrighted file sharing falls on the ISPs instead of the individuals.
About the Author:
Taylor is a Staff Writer for WebProNews
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