Usenet service Newzbin in the dock over file-sharing allegations

Newzbin.com, the popular Usenet indexing service, is in court this week defending itself against movie and music studios alleging that the site is providing a copyright infringement service.

Usenet is a global network comprised of tens of thousands of 'newsgroups', and is one of the oldest parts of the internet, having been around since 1980. In addition to the multitude of text-only discussion groups covering almost any conceivable topic, there is an active subset of binary groups dealing in file-sharing, which includes everything from innocent pictures and documents to copyrighted movies and music.

Due to the chaotic nature of Usenet and the difficulty in finding a specific file, which may be split into chunks for transmission, sites like Newzbin index the content and organise it for end users who, in Newzbin's case, pay for the right to access its database.

Like the legal cases against BitTorrent sites such as The Pirate Bay and Suprnova, it seems the action against Newzbin will focus on the site enabling access to movies, music and TV shows, arguing that its primary purpose is to allow users to infringe the copyright of companies such as 20th Century Fox, one of the biggest names involved in the battle.

In the opening day of '20th Century Fox and Others vs Newzbin Ltd', the studios introduced FACT (Federation Against Copyright Theft) agents and an expert witness who explained how the site worked, while the barrister apparently went out of his way to point out the differences between Newzbin's service and standard web site hyperlinks.

Newzbin does not host any content itself, or run tracking servers like BitTorrent sites, instead it provides a user-friendly portal to the global newsgroup network which is accessed through entirely separate services. Though one point of contention may the human editors used by Newzbin who manually update the database with further information, for example links to the Internet Movie Database.

The difficulty for copyright holders is that tracking down those responsible for both uploading to and downloading from newsgroups is technically challenging compared to the relative ease at which they are able to monitor BitTorrent. If Newzbin were to close due to legal action it would not prevent access to copyrighted material, but it would appear they are pursuing soft targets like Newzbin in order to make it more difficult to access Usenet. The next step may be Usenet providers themselves.

The case against Newzbin is only one of many ongoing legal actions against companies and individuals accused of online piracy, and with the government's controversial Digital Economy Bill being heavily debated in parliament it's likely there will be many more to come.