Don't worry - like every other lawsuit the RIAA has brought into court, the judge will inevitably laugh and suggest the defendant counter-sue. The RIAA has -finally- picked that target I've been hoping they go after for awhile now - the people with real money to defend themselves. Not only can they put up an impervious defense, there are laws laws the RIAA has no idea which exsist, clearly. Shut'em down usenet! Show the RIAA who controls the internet.

** still waiting for the day the RIAA's website is defaced ><

How is this different from suing car-makers because their cars can be used to break the law (e.g. speeding)? Or suing a knife- or gun-makers because their products can be used to break the law (e.g. killing)? And so on...

Usenet (the network, not the company) really is, in a sense, the original P2P network... it even pre-dates the Web by a number of years. I kind of wondered when the **AA would get around to taking a whack at it.

I wonder whether their targeting of usenet.com was done out of ignorance of how Usenet works, or as a (mostly) symbolic gesture. I have no idea if usenet.com is even one of the larger players in the Usenet provider market; I wasn't aware of their existence until this news story.

all p2p, usnet, etc should move out of the US=problem solved.

Go after Giganews next. They'll send your LIAAwyers home with rectal prolapses.

As long as you have that hammer, those screws keep looking like nails!!

I'm going to sue (in order):

1. The ghost in the machine
2. Atlantis
3. Father Christmas
4. Aliens from the 4th dimension
5. President John F. Kennedy
6. The emperor's new clothes
7. Some inanimate objects
8. The US justice system.

I'm pretty sure I'll be more successful than the RIAA in whatever it is we're trying to achieve by sueing.

firstly, usenet has the OSP protection of the DMCA, now the riaa (no caps=disrespect for the evil ones) has some ground on them with the mpaa vs Grokster decision as Grokster was specifically advertising itself as a Napster replacement while Usenet.com is advertising mp3 access and talking about how it's better than p2p

however, telecoms giving binary access on usenet is protected since they have the OSP protection and dont advertise mp3 or movies, but "large files", of which, many are legal (ati's drivers, the ut3 demo, etc.)

as long as non-american usenet providers exist, riaa will not win the war, and freedom shall be here

considering suncom sued keyboard makers for making "defeat devices" because you can press shift to bypass the autorun on disc insertion; they got laughed out of court

btw, talk to your senators and representatives, tell them the riaa/mpaa terror campaign is bad for americans and dont vote for people who take "campaign contributions" from the entertainment industry (sometimes riaa doesnt give, but sony does, same difference, different name)

They don't understand how Usenet works, apparently. You can shut down individual access providers (which include the big Telecoms), but the "cloud" of data is still out there. Anyone with the werewithal and the bandwidth can set up another provider in a matter of minutes.

And if they think they have trouble going after foreign companies now, just wait until they try to shut down Europe, which is probably the largest user of Usenet right now and has the least restrictions on its use.

I suspect what will happen is that the big US telecoms, who have a vested interest in Usenet will put the kaibosh on this as a friend of the court. After all, first Usenet, then email and WWW. If the providers can be held liable for what's in the cloud, they can be held liable for other traffic as well.

RIAA and MPAA are really going at it the wrong way. Instead of suing providers of the service, they should simply buy the service to shut them down. Let the MPAA and RIAA collectively buy out all the cable/dsl lines in the USA and we can kiss piracy goodbye!

This has been needing to happen for a while now.

RIAA has completely lost it, when will they understand that they are fighting a war that cannot be won in their own terms? These bastards are so near-sighted and greedy that they would charge mental playback of their content if they could realistically track it.

Usenet is oldest foundations of the internet. It is impossible to shut it down or control its activities.

The real problem is that copyright and patent system desperately needs a massive overhaul. RIAA and MPAA are unwilling to accept changes and there is nobody in Congress with enough willpower to oppose RIAA/MPAA's will and make realistic changes to copyright and patent system.

I know that piracy is a problem, but it is massively overblown. It should be tried as a "cost to do business" rather than being a worse offense than classical fraud and murder. It is damm sad that simple shoplifting and theft are less severe offenses than copyright infringement of merely bland songs and films.