

British Telecom ordered to blacklist Usenet search engine - otherwise
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/07/british-telecom-ordered-to-blacklist-usenet-search-engine.ars

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regularfry
Part of the problem with this ruling is the abuse of Cleanfeed, BT's blocking
system. There are a lot of people in the UK who were only ever happy with
Cleanfeed and the IWF being in existence for as long as their scope was
limited to the "worst of the worst", clearly illegal content.

This ruling is why, if you're going to have a system like this, it's not
enough to simply say "Well, it'll only ever be used for X. Trust us." You
_have_ to go through the effort to enshrine that limitation in legislation.

~~~
Tyrannosaurs
It's even bad for people who supported Cleanfeed as a solution to those "worst
of the worst" problems as this is going to raise a lot of questions about it's
use at all.

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jasonjei
While the US doesn't exactly have an untarnished record with free speech, at
least it is a constitutional right. The UK, on the other hand, doesn't
guarantee freedom of speech and has in recent years banned certain forms of
literature. Michael Savage is banned from entering the UK and was compared to
violent religious and racial zealots, even though he never told anyone to use
violence.

From Wikipedia: > "On 6 December 2007, Samina Malik was convicted of
possessing literature deemed illegal by the Terrorism Act 2000. The illegal
literature included poems she had written. She received a nine-month suspended
jail sentence.[40] This case has been condemned by Hizb ut-Tahrir[41][42][43]"

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ashconnor
Although the UK doesn't have a constitution, Freedom of Speech is guaranteed
in Article 10 of the Human Rights Act 1998 and protected by the European
Convention on Human Rights.

That being said, the number of clauses in which freedom of speech is
'restricted' means that the UK doesn't strictly have freedom of speech. You
are even free to speak as you want or not. The UK falls into the latter
category.

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radu_floricica
Yelling fire in a theater? Absolutes are of no use in this kind of
discussion... better to go with "more" and "enough".

~~~
ashconnor
Then the offense should be "endangering the public" through wreckless actions
than the speech itself.

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nextparadigms
_"BT argued that when its subscribers access Newzbin2, BT is acting as a mere
conduit for their network activity. Therefore, BT said, these users were not
"using [BT's] service to infringe copyright." But the judge rejected this
interpretation, holding that "users are using BT’s service to infringe
copyright," and that he therefore has the authority to grant the injunction._
"

Isn't that like getting an injunction for Youtube because users are using it
to view infringing videos? Where does it stop?

UK judges don't seem very experienced with copyright cases. It seems they have
a pretty simplistic view of things. If "it looks bad" then it must be bad, so
they rule against it.

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jackpirate
_UK judges don't seem very experienced with copyright cases._

I'm sure they're plenty experienced. Their experience just isn't what we want
it to be.

As they say, Practice makes permanent, not perfect.

~~~
chunkyslink
I would agree.

Its also the case that how copyright law is interpreted is different from
country to country.

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trotsky
_But within months, Newzbin's source code began circulating on the Internet,
and anonymous parties with servers in Sweden relaunched the service at the
same domain._

This colors the event somewhat oddly. To be clear, once the service was
defeated in court in reopened being run by people unknown who had a starkly
similar administration style, the website operated under all of its old domain
names, all of the software was the same, the entire multi-year database was
the same, all user accounts existed and existing passwords worked, and
existing credit balances (you paid a certain amount per month) existed and
were honored by the new admins.

So, uh, yeah. While it doesn't excuse the behavior of trying to get it blocked
like CP, it does somewhat explain it. You can't thumb your nose so completely
at the process and not expect to piss people off to the point that they'll
continue hunting you.

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turbojerry
Users will use Tor to get around this, so is the order a joke or will BT have
to shut down all its internet business (most broadband internet in the UK is
just rebranded BT ADSL)?

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hippich
hm. Since source code available, just deploy site to new server under new
domain name. If for every domain blocked Hollywood lawyers will need to ask
court - this become unprofitable soon =))

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rjd
Probably not, depending ont he final wording of the court decision a
reasonable demonstration its the same site the same ruling could be applied
without going back to court.

~~~
aes256
Surely such a demonstration would require another court order, though? If not,
who is to judge the extent to which two sites are the same site?

If the Newzbin source code is released — and to be clear the issue here is not
the software itself but what people do with it — and a hundred Newzbin clones
pop up overnight with entirely different branding, domains, hosting
arrangements, etc., surely one court order against Newzbin is not enough to
force ISPs to block all of them?

To reiterate, the software behind Newzbin is entirely legitimate. Passing a
court order that enables blocking orders for all websites using the same
software would be akin to one that enabled the blocking of all Wordpress blogs
because one such blog had been used for illegal purposes.

The thin edge of a very large wedge indeed...

~~~
rjd
Yeah it would depend on the wording of the final decision. But courts aren't
stupid, and criminals trying to alter behavior to side step a ruling is
nothing new either. These cat and mouse games have been going on since laws
started.

