Insider Interview: Usenet expert on file sharing

We know Usenet as a secluded, rather unstructured and inaccessible environment where Internet 'geeks' discussed all kinds of topics on the various forums: .alt.newsgroups. Usenet was definitely not mainstream, nor easy if you weren’t familiar with it and it seemed as if there was a policy not to speak about Usenet.  This left Usenet virtually untouched by outsiders for years. Until recently, now more and more commercial parties are offering subscriptions to Usenet with easy overviews of  ‘selected content’: music, games, movies and software to download.  In the Netherlands you can get subscriptions of a monthly flat fee for around 10€ for unlimited downloading, with the advantage of far better data distribution than the regular Internet. No surprise Usenet is becoming mainstream very quickly, just as the organisations offering file-sharing services. The friendly Usenet is risking becoming the next free haven for piracy. Futureofcopyright.com wondered what the possibilities for distributing copyright protected and also for take-down of illegal content are and we managed to speak to a Usenet expert, on the condition that he/she remains anonymous, to provide us with some inside views.

Is there something like a central authority that is ruling Usenet?

No, Usenet is a worldwide network, compare it to an Internet within the Internet, existing of more than a 100 server farms located all over the world. They decide themselves what they put up. There are, however, protocols for newsgroups.

What is the advantage of Usenet above the regular Internet?

Better data distribution, faster access and higher redundancy.

So, perfectly suited for file sharing?

Yes, but not necessarily illegal content. I would say, the majority of Usenet users have nothing to do with illegal file sharing. It is just like on the regular Internet: illegal file sharing happens, but that’s not the primarily goal for most users.  Besides, most of the Internet users interested in file sharing go to sites like www.thepiratebay.org. There are of course companies like Usenext.de that offer access to customized index/catalogue of movies which can be changed, commented and rated by the users. Just like on the Internet you see many more downloaders than uploaders.  The advantage of Usenet is that downloading usually goes very fast.

Who are the uploaders?

Most of them are techies that find it a sport to share the newest content as fast as possible.

And what about the rumours that Usenet providers are uploading themselves?

Yes, I have heard these rumours, but have no hard evidence of such behaviour. The Usenet community is not that big and one knows each other in this world. I would not be surprised however if there are some providers uploading themselves. There is a huge demand for illegal content, so in the end someone will provide it. Sometimes you see such fast uploads that it is hard to believe they have done from a simple home PC. But I also want to state that most providers are very nice, law-abiding persons, who have no interest in illegal file sharing and make a decent business. A common misunderstanding for example is that they would not be willing to cooperate with rights owners.

Interesting, can you tell us more about that cooperating with rights owners?

Traditionally ISP’s, internet industries, techies, etc. see the content industry as ‘The Enemy’ and vice versa: the content industry has a habit of blaming ISP’s etc for everything that goes wrong.  In reality it is not that simple, but these are strong sentiments. For example it is perfectly possible to have illegal files removed from Usenet: once you remove the original file, the file cannot be accessed anymore from any location. This is because files are centrally stored and not, like the Internet, saved at many different locations. So, if a rights owner has a problem with a certain file on Usenet and is legally entitled to have it removed, most Usenet providers are happy to remove the file from their servers if requested to do so. Some of them have an effective procedure for this. Take a look at support.highwinds-media.com for example, where a variety of infringements and violations can be reported online.  Many rights owners, however still choose to have their lawyer send letters and start procedures that take weeks. Quite silly, because a simple request would remove the file much faster and at far lower cost. If the music and movie industry would stop instructing their lawyers straight away without first asking anything, I think, both parties would gain a lot. As far as I know most Usenet providers are open to gentle cooperation. They don’t profit from illegal content either and are making efforts to offer clean and trustworthy services. The example of Highwinds illustrates this.

But aren’t providers making money out of selling access for file sharing?

Yes, that is true, some providers use that as their unique selling point, but as I said before: most of the providers are there to make a decent business. If the rights owners have problems with certain providers that focus on file sharing, let them go after them. There is no need to stigmatize the whole community.

Are there possibilities for the rights owners to use the advantages of Usenet for legal distribution?

Of course. The so-called ‘Super-distribution’ – method is possible through Usenet.  Super-distribution works as follows: upload a file > downloader buys license for decryption and enjoys product and rights owner can be compensated. This method works very well, but is currently not very popular, because very little content is offered through this method. Music and film industries should consider this. The advantage for them is that it is technically possible to control what is being downloaded; files would only be made available for download subject to their authorisation.

Users could pay per gigabyte and rights owners can be compensated. Another advantage is that Usenet allows relatively easy filtering of illegal content.

What do you think about the litigation against Newzbin?

Newzbin is a portal, where users and agents work together on finding the most popular and most important files. Unfortunately this community is trying to find the most popular cinema movies, or the best pre-releases on music, as well as games, software etc.

Newzbin is the perfect example on how people destroy the respectability of the Usenet by thinking only about their own profit. A platform like eBay, selling thousands and millions of products cannot be held responsible for some illegal activities, but

if there was an eBay-alternative concentrating on selling only pirated and stolen products - we would have the perfect example of what Newzbin means for the Usenet community.

Newzbin has received a lot of complaints, even from the Usenet community, about their activities. The litigation against Newzbin is welcomed by the biggest part of the Usenet community. The Usenet community should continue to investigate which Usenet Providers are still supporting these "black sheep" - providers like Giganews should definitely stop allowing these portals to generate money from their advertisement revenues as they've allowed in the past.

How big is the problem of piracy on Usenet?

The question about the size of the piracy problem is more difficult. I cannot decide if piracy on the Usenet is a real problem for a copyright owner, because I do not know if Warner is really interested in keeping away their bestseller "Dark Knight" from the

Usenet after they've generated more then a billion USD with that movie. What I can say is, that every mission of Warner to keep this movie away from the Usenet has failed, because it has been available from day one until today in all best available versions and different languages. For DVD rental stores the availability of Batman Dark Knight should be a real big problem, because the Blu-ray versions can be found and downloaded within a couple of minutes with high-speed in every imaginable HD resolution and format from the Usenet.

Nearly every movie, every music album, every game (PSP, Wii, etc.), every application can be found on the Usenet - this is true. Studios and other copyright owners will continue to fail if they persist in engaging the traditional copyright protection agencies that couple the Usenet with Bittorrent, eDonkey and RapidShare. When somebody starts comparing the Usenet with these platforms they demonstrate a poor understanding of this network.

I have been talking with the Usenet community about the removal attempts of one specific copyright protection agency relating to one recent title.   We discovered that the agency concerned did not issue notices asking for the removal from   the source servers on the Usenet, so failed to benefit from the automatic removal functionality on the Usenet network, and they used very poor search engines, which had found approx. 5% of the available files for this specific movie.  The removal process was delayed, so the files continued to be available for a couple of weeks.  It confirms the poor knowledge level.

There are many other search engines available for the Usenet, which would had caused better results. Asking the Usenet community for help and more information doesn't cost anything, while behaving instead like Sheriffs with guns will always lead to such bad results.

The cumulated download bandwidth of the binary Usenet should be worldwide at approx. 400Gbit/s - 600Gbit/s in average per week. This "could" mean 94 movie downloads per second, 19 DVD downloads per second, 4 Blu-ray downloads per second, 384 music-album downloads per second, 25,600 music-song downloads per second. We do not know, if the bandwidth is fragmented that way, but it should already

demonstrate, that based on the fact that everything is available on the Usenet, a huge part of this potential traffic could be content which is popular and copyrighted. The movie "Dark Knight" is available at this moment in 400 different versions (size, language, etc,) on the Usenet and could be one of these 94 movie downloads occurring per second.

So, illegal content can be removed from Usenet?

Yes, that is what I’m saying: locate it, ask for it to be taken down and it is gone. If the music and film industries would make use of more sophisticated services and techniques for finding illegal content,  and be more co-operative (including sharing costs) the problem of illegal content on Usenet could be contained efficiently. It will remain an ongoing battle of course, but there is really a lot that can be done.

However, sometimes I have the idea that the industries like to keep their old-fashioned practices about notice-and-take down, the supporting firms that developed around their needs and their lawyers. It is just not effective and they’d better realise that. Technologies are not the enemy, nor are Usenet providers. It is time to talk and to cooperate.

Thank you very much for this insider view!