Usenet versus Hollywood on movie downloads
The Boston Globe is reporting on a battle between Usenet and the movie industry. Usenet is actually an separate entity from the Internet and is basically a collection of tens of thousands of newsgroups ranging from aardvarks to zebra. Picture files are also widely available and it remains one of the most readily available sources of pornography. With the advent of high-speed downloads and readily available video and music compression software, Usenet has become a haven for downloading pirated movies. I once worked with a guy who would sometimes download 2 or 3 movies a night. The Boston Globe has this to say:
Late last month, the Motion Picture Association of America filed its first-ever lawsuits against Internet companies that help people download illegally copied films over the Usenet. The association says that the companies, NZB-Zone, BinNews, and DVDRS, provide a Google-like search service for Usenet, one that lets its users find thousands of pirated films, including recent hits such as ”King Kong,” ”The Chronicles of Narnia,” and ”The 40-Year-Old Virgin.”
I’m not a big fan of Hollywood and the outrageous prices that are charged for mediocre movies these days, but distributing and downloading pirated software, movies, and music is both illegal and immoral.
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