After
Newzbin2 was banned across the United Kingdom, the website decided to
go offline permanently for good. This is a significant loss for both
Usenet’s networks and a few thousands of users who relied on the site’s
services.
Despite the Newzbin2’s efforts to continue operation by complying with all DMCA requests and satisfying their users’ needs, the portal finally went offline. Apparently, the decision in question wasn’t easy to make, but so was the anti-piracy campaign against the website.
This past August, Virgin Media was the last ISP to block access to Newzbin2, following the example of TalkTalk, BT, and Sky. Jim Killock, the CEO of the Open Rights Group, admits that such witch hunt was legitimate, but had some irregularities: censorship and block orders were disturbing and unnecessary if you take into consideration the success in tackling the businesses and payment mechanisms involved. He also points out that online censorship is a blunt instrument and a dangerous practice. The Open Rights Group wished right holders the best in enforcing their rights and developing their businesses, but urged them not to resort to further requests for online filtering.
Newzbin2 has made an announcement, saying that a number of factors had made the closure the only option. The operators have been struggling with poor indexing of Usenet and poor numbers of the reports caused by its editors dropping out with nobody replacing them. In addition, its servers have been unstable and often crashing, which means that the NZBs & NFOs were unavailable and the site operators simply didn’t have the money to replace them.
Although Newzbin2 was started a viable underground commercial venture, the figures didn’t stack up. The predecessor of the service, Newzbin1, had about 700,000 registered users. However, only 10-15% of them were active users and of those only a few 10?s of thousands paid premium topups, which still made it good money for the Newzbin1 owners. Newzbin2 never got that userbase back – it could only account for around 40,000 active users and the number of premium users is in the small thousands. As a result, the portal cost much more to run than the operators brought in. Worse still, the portal’s payment providers dropped out or started running scared, though Newzbin2 is 100% DMCA compliant.
The service confirmed that it wouldn’t be back as a search service, but the operators might run a blog from that site at some point.
Despite the Newzbin2’s efforts to continue operation by complying with all DMCA requests and satisfying their users’ needs, the portal finally went offline. Apparently, the decision in question wasn’t easy to make, but so was the anti-piracy campaign against the website.
This past August, Virgin Media was the last ISP to block access to Newzbin2, following the example of TalkTalk, BT, and Sky. Jim Killock, the CEO of the Open Rights Group, admits that such witch hunt was legitimate, but had some irregularities: censorship and block orders were disturbing and unnecessary if you take into consideration the success in tackling the businesses and payment mechanisms involved. He also points out that online censorship is a blunt instrument and a dangerous practice. The Open Rights Group wished right holders the best in enforcing their rights and developing their businesses, but urged them not to resort to further requests for online filtering.
Newzbin2 has made an announcement, saying that a number of factors had made the closure the only option. The operators have been struggling with poor indexing of Usenet and poor numbers of the reports caused by its editors dropping out with nobody replacing them. In addition, its servers have been unstable and often crashing, which means that the NZBs & NFOs were unavailable and the site operators simply didn’t have the money to replace them.
Although Newzbin2 was started a viable underground commercial venture, the figures didn’t stack up. The predecessor of the service, Newzbin1, had about 700,000 registered users. However, only 10-15% of them were active users and of those only a few 10?s of thousands paid premium topups, which still made it good money for the Newzbin1 owners. Newzbin2 never got that userbase back – it could only account for around 40,000 active users and the number of premium users is in the small thousands. As a result, the portal cost much more to run than the operators brought in. Worse still, the portal’s payment providers dropped out or started running scared, though Newzbin2 is 100% DMCA compliant.
The service confirmed that it wouldn’t be back as a search service, but the operators might run a blog from that site at some point.
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