Southern Charms, an amateur porn site, is locked in a battle with the uploaders of a.b.southern-charms and a.b.southern-charms.pictures. They’ve been sending in DMCA requests and their DMCA rep has even been posting to the group warning people.
It kind of reminds me how you’ll hear about authors confronting people who upload their books on the web. Southern Charms mostly moves forward with legal threats, but then the amount of money are on different levels, so that is understandable.
Due to the nature of Usenet, anyone being able to post, I wonder if we’ll see more copyright holders posting in these groups. Especially niche groups like this, where you know people have to be looking at the individual headers. There is no way people won’t see the copyright holder’s posts. Then we can all see these interesting exchanges.
It seems as though the people who frequent that group didn’t quite believe what the alledged poster was saying. Assuming that he was simply a troll. The first post could easily be seen as that. Usually copyright holders don’t lock horns with Usenet uploaders.
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:36:34 -0500 From: DMCA Southern-Charms <[email protected]> Newsgroups: alt.binaries.southern-charms Subject: Southern Charms Removal Notice Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:36:28 -0400 Message-ID: <[email protected]> User-Agent: ForteAgent/7.00.32.1200 trialware MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 62 X-Trace: sv3-B4mRF+Jr0I947+qauzYrTXtIdmLz2ieYfsPac/zQWXESFlXS3kCs+34dhgih+7qZPoWuHiOKusR9tlc!x46/1vJxsL6LBpfBN+ifN8mLIW1vq2cKOyWtumNLDX2w1qhwMQK/CZpPf5OYQ8Qt4ngYzHNUAinm!rE7trKU= X-Complaints-To: www.supernews.com/docs/abuse.html X-DMCA-Complaints-To: www.supernews.com/docs/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 3895 X-Original-Bytes: 3834 To Whom It May Concern: There seems to be considerable confusion concerning the removal of Southern Charms content from UseNet. In order to circumvent the perpetuation of what amounts to the blatant wholesale exploitation of the material in question, Southern Charms provides this official statement to enlighten you. On May 7, 2012, Southern Charms was awarded in excess of 7.1 million dollars in it's first copyright violation case - case # C2-10-566 by The Honorable Edmund A. Sargus, Jr, United States District Judge. The amount of the award was based directly upon the amount of Southern Charms content. UseNet currently displays more Southern Charms content than the offender in the lawsuit, You so eloquently describe your actions as "advertisement" that you seem to think Southern Charms should be in concert with, when in reality you are directly responsible for adversely affecting every model in every image you have ever uploaded to UseNet in addition to breaking the law. Be advised, as Hugh Elmwood stated, YOUR anonimity also ends with the billing process. By law we can and will obtain your contact information should any further abuse appear.. Having successfully prosecuted copyright infringement, we are now seeking to have all Southern Charms content immediately disabled/removed from UseNet and any other Internet venue per DMCA law. For those who are not aware, from our official DMCA: "We further request that the following Southern Charms exclusively licensed material posted on UseNet be removed. Since this practice has started, it has cost us millions in sales. We will not allow this practice to continue. It is our intent to permanently remove all Southern Charms content from UseNet. As you nor the participants of UseNet neither asked for nor received permission to use Southern Charms images nor to make or distribute copies, including electronic copies, of same, you and they have willfully infringed upon our rights under 17 U.S.C. Section 101 et seq. and could be liable for statutory damages as high as $150,000 as set forth in Section 504(c)(2) therein. All of the below listed images are licensed exclusively to Southern Charms." That is $150,000 PER VIOLATION... Let me clarify- all of the images seen on Southern Charms are copyright protected and licensed exclusively to Southern Charms. Southern Charms and it's models will no longer tolerate the unauthorized use of it's intellectual properties, and will prosecute those who continue to infringe upon Southern Charms' copyrights.. Regards, Southern Charms Tech Support [email protected] Southern Charms DMCA [email protected] for Southern Charms Owner, William Wesson
I’ve never seen anything like it. And it is highly unusual. It seems as though they’re doing the DMCA requests themselves. Although, I’m only guessing.
You can probably see why people thought this was a troll. Especially since it’s so easy for anyone to do a DMCA on some usenet providers.
Luckily for us the DMCA agent kept posting.
NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 12:38:06 -0500 From: DMCA Southern-Charms <[email protected]> Newsgroups: alt.binaries.southern-charms Subject: Southern Charms Removal Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2012 13:38:06 -0400 Message-ID: <[email protected]> User-Agent: ForteAgent/7.00.32.1200 trialware MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1 Content-Transfer-Encoding: 8bit Lines: 143 X-Trace: sv3-E1hewQ9FdZ6zqb5r5Gc3TSeKIepDn7SNa5cLpW4NbtILbVXI8KIMBtNb7gqQHtJEUSvxYvCZ9wb3+E/!AdzzxlFbjoB/IymfR/BcMn2qX4dVm+dzG90KbpFd5quQ0sl4TwbuNCYHx85ur+BYgGEte2MOPNXf!oxixXAE= X-Complaints-To: www.supernews.com/docs/abuse.html X-DMCA-Complaints-To: www.supernews.com/docs/dmca.html X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Please be sure to forward a copy of ALL headers X-Abuse-and-DMCA-Info: Otherwise we will be unable to process your complaint properly X-Postfilter: 1.3.40 Bytes: 6504 X-Original-Bytes: 6443 Having a web site is an incredible rush! You can’t imagine the delight and great pleasure I take from this fabulous sexual and creative outlet! I'm Oh Alex on SC2 and I’m so thrilled that there are men who have an appreciation for the real woman… the AMATEUR model! So why do all the hackers and thieves and re-posters that profess adulation for the every-day-woman seem bent on forcing us into extinction? Do you seriously want only the pros on the Internet? We can’t afford $500 flash units and $65 stilettos if our sales continue to decline. The pros can. Is that your goal? Have you noticed that many Charms have stopped posting while others have quit? Could it be because their web sites no longer provide the income they deserve? Anyone who claims it’s not “work” or doesn't’t “cost anything” is ignoring what they’re looking at. Or perhaps having their whole catalog of images and videos provided for free on Usenet has discouraged them, taking the fun out of what they were doing. Some felt forced to stop as your posting and re-posting their pictures all over the Internet increased their risk of discovery. It was their choice to be on ONE web site where the club content was more circumspect, the explicit images available only ‘behind closed doors’ so to speak. One European Charm quit because her young adult children were familiar with Usenet so you can applaud yourselves for taking a very sensuous and kind Charms’ offerings away from the world. We are every woman you encounter in your daily life…our bravery in what we do should be applauded and supported, not sabotaged and exploited. I wonder what makes you think you have the right to take anything from any of us? Why you seem so willing to hurt us… You damage the very objects you praise… What kind of mentality does it take to steal? Why was the intellect used to hack into the web site not applied to some more honorable pursuit? You try to cover the insult by claiming all this somehow assists with advertising. Then you seek to ignore the law, trying to excuse the official notification from the Southern Charms Staff as something one of your “trolls” dreamed up. How much thought have you given to stealing from our pay checks? That is precisely what you have done to us when you posted and download our images and videos from Usenet. Are you as free with your own income? Would you like to find out? The $150,000 fine is per violation and the attorneys are collecting a list right now so we may have the opportunity to explore this if you'd like. Viewers of Usenet, do not excuse yourselves simply because you didn't’t provide the stolen goods. You are as much a part of this crime as the posters. You are the reason they hack in and illegally re-post our efforts. Your praise and adulation for the narcissists with no scruples perpetuates the crime. They thrive on those ego strokes and false bravado. You'll notice every one of you hides behind fake e mails and names for your posts. Has it ever occurred to you that all 800 models have access to Usenet? That we can identify and report our own images to the DMCA department for removal, that it may not have been your back-stabbing petty rivals trying to dethrone your bragging rights as the reigning low life who thinks he is above the law? Yes we do own the copyrights. And each and every one of you, even those who have simply made requests for the stolen goods could be accessories to the fact… and for the record, previous Charms' content is not fair game for reposting, and our three preview posts are not up for grabs either. So posting our free shots and asking for more has put you on the same list as the hackers with the club content. The news readers you subscribe to by law will provide the Southern Charms attorneys with your contact information. Ever wonder why several of the larger services removed the entire alt. binaries. SC and SC-pictures? It wasn't because of some bluff. Do you ever read your own posts? Do you have any idea what you sound like? You delude yourselves by stating your contribution of our intellectual property to Usenet somehow assists us or Southern Charms in advertisement. Really? Whole site rips? Sent around the world? Just take a minute to think that one through…. Do not expect the models of Southern Charms who are the legal copyright holders to allow your abuse to continue. The material is licensed for exclusive use on Southern Charms and Southern Charms is looking for the next lawsuit. We are providing as much as possible to the legal team and it includes some of your other areas you so freely re-post our images and videos to. All it will take is one refusal to remove the content or repeat offenders to repost what has been removed. No matter how you “massage the posts”, re-name the files, or crop our copyright and licensure statements off, we and our members will always recognize and report our own images. Yes, the members are mad as hell and helping us. Every single post that has ever been made on Usenet concerning Southern Charms has put the poster in jeopardy as it provides an official record of our content from the point of upload.
Although, if no one believed this poster at this point, he even provided some convincing proof. A picture of one of the models holding a sign with her opposition to Usenet.
Edit: I found someone who is on the otherside of this little battle who posted an explenation about what is going on. Or at least his thoughts on the matter.
Message-ID: <[email protected]> From: Reality <[email protected]> X-Mailer: Mozilla 3.04Gold (WinNT; I) MIME-Version: 1.0 Newsgroups: alt.binaries.southern-charms.pictures Subject: Re: THE REAL REASON THAT PEOPLE STOPPED POSTING............... References: <[email protected]> <C8Ycs.287727$[email protected]> <[email protected]> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Lines: 56 X-Complaints-To: [email protected] NNTP-Posting-Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:33:37 UTC Date: Wed, 10 Oct 2012 09:33:04 +0100 X-Received-Bytes: 3290 Well, Mr X is, of course, not only wholly incorrect but dangerously and maliciously incorrect. Before anyone rips apart his "logic" let's ask ourselves why on earth anyone visiting a group which has no other function than to be a place to post Southern Charms picures should so assiduously oppose that obvious function. Mr X's message is a fine example of confusion masquerading as "providing facts". Whereas some of his so called "facts" are correct he should be very careful about what he deduces from them. For instance, it's probably true that posters did get scare notes from their ISPs. This happens all the time throughout Usenet. ISPs cannot simply ignore complaints but they rarely get involved. It's just a routine which they feel they have to follow. It has no actual substance. Even if the ISPs DID receive copyright complaints they could not have come from the Southern Charms website and there is no evidence that they did. The SC "message" posted here was clearly a fake concocted by a troll. Southern Charms have no interest - they collect their money from the sites they hire out WHETHER OR NOT the pix are re-posted over the whole web. The loser is ONLY the girl hiring the site who also happens to be the ONLY copyright holder. Let's get that fact straight, shall we? As for Usenet not being a place to post other people's pictures, well that's too ridiculous for words. Usenet would be absolutely barren if that was the reality. Also, let's hark back again to the title of the group. If it's not for posting Southern Charms pictures then it's hard to know what it IS for. The reality is that this group used to be a nice little earner for the Southern Charms webmaster as it was a fantastic source of free advertising. Let's get THAT fact right too! The increase in access security at SC is another FACT and while we cannot prove that posters did not take out subscriptions to all the SC sites it would be stretching the idea of philanthropy a little far to imagine that they did. No, they couldn't get in any more so they couldn't post any more. That's the reality, nothing to do with copyrights at all. It's pleasant to think that the posters would post if they wanted to. How stupidly simplistic. If they can't get the pics they can't post them, whether they want to or not. Time for Mr X to get real. So, if any prospective poster feels intimidated by Mr X, forget it. He's clueless. This group's title tells us admirably what it's for. We don't need a troll like Mr X to try to make out otherwise.
The Morganelli Group seems to be the ones responsible for a lot of people’s consternation with DMCA takedowns lately. They’ve been clearly taking advantage of Astraweb’s automated DMCA process.
Morganelli is primarily responsible for submitting the DMCAs to takedown UFC from Astraweb. The speed he’s been able to get them taken down is a true testament to the alacrity of Astraweb’s automated DMCA process.
Although Morganelli goes even further and actively gloats about the success of his DMCA takedown request busines. On his site’s Wall of Fame, you’ll see sloppy screenshots of people complaining about UFC coming down from Astraweb almost immediately. Sometimes even writing on the screenshot itself to respond to the people he’s screencapping.
Now let’s see if other Usenet providers can take advantage and attract some Astraweb refugees.
I touched on this briefly two posts ago about Astraweb’s DMCA automation. I was worried about abuse, but now I feel like all of my fears about potential abuse have been confirmed.
Semel on the NewsBin forum tested sending in a fake DMCA takedown request and succeeded. No surprises. Other members discussed what would keep release groups from DMCAing each others releases, and now you can even remove speech you don’t like by simply filing an automated DMCA request.
Let’s just hope that no one takes advantage of the situation to purposefully hurt Astraweb’s service. Obviously, without human review a lot of damage can be done. Copyright Trolls could easily take it upon themselves to start filing takedown requests.
Let’s hope that Astraweb will change their policy of following the path of least resistance.
EDIT: I had a small misunderstanding that Semel cleared up in comments. He only uploaded passworded archives that looked like copyrighted material. I still wonder if someone could take down anything using Astraweb’s automated system.
Relevant screencap:
I’ve said in the past that using a provider’s EU server as a backup is a good way to get around completes, but that is no way of getting around a DMCA takedown.
All US providers will have to do the takedowns on their EU servers as well. No way around that. If they didn’t follow through with the takedown on all of their servers, that would open themselves to legal problems.
This is why I’ve always told people to get a dutch provider as a backup server. If you’re primarily getting console games, then you’re going to be out of luck on US servers. At least for the major ones.
If getting console games is important, you might want to invest in getting an unlimited account overseas. The retention will probably be around 800 days or more. Pricing is tiered by speed.
Tweaknews is worth a look, but there are others out there.
TorrentFreak is reporting that Newzbin2 is now going to use their newzbin2.es domain. Pretty smart in the current climate. I imagine the closing of MegaUpload has given them some extra urgency.
Many similar sites have gone to the same solution. The US Government can only seize US domains, so by moving a site to a non-US domain, it makes seizing it much harder.
More interesting is that Newzbin2 is now wanting to start their own VPN service. With everyone getting so amped up about privacy, it’s no small wonder why this is becoming a booming business.
Like last time I wrote about VPNs and Usenet, I still don’t think it is useful for most people. It gives people peace of mind, which is worth something. I doubt that it would help fully protect your privacy except against your ISP or anyone on your home network.
Due to the amount of webtracking, people are anonymous in name only on the web. That WSJ article discusses how easy it is to de-anonymize data. The WSJ interviewed Peter Eckersley, a scientist for Electronic Frontier Foundation. He could nearly identify someone with even just a little information. In fact, he was able to narrow down their test subject to just one of 64 people in the world. And that was just by knowing just a small sample of his browsing habits.
Depending on who you are worried is watching your traffic, using a VPN won’t help very much if all of your browsing habits are the same.
As everyone can see, even without SOPA or PIPA, filesharing sites can still be taken down. I still don’t think that this recent event will have any impact on the future of Usenet. MegaUpload was antagonizing the music industry and flaunting the use as a piracy site.
MegaUpload was pretty blatant about their content, including paying users to upload content. The big cardinal sin, as always, was not complying with DMCA takedown notices. Reading the indictment, this was a major reason for shutting them down.
You won’t see the big Usenet providers paying people to upload content or even openly brag about the content on their servers. One of the most popular providers in fact only talks about the textside of Usenet on their site, even though hardly any of their subscribers ever look at the discussion side of Usenet. But they don’t want to create problems for themselves.
Giganews gets a lot of attention because they comply with DMCA takedowns very quickly. They’re running their business in a more legit way than MegaUpload ever did. The current environment makes complying with DMCA takedown notices a legal necessity.
SOPA/PIPA wasn’t needed at all to takedown the site. What I’m wondering is if this will change DMCA strategies of other major providers that have US based servers. Astraweb has always been a favorite because they appear to be much slower processing DMCA takedowns, but they may have to change that soon. Astraweb is based in Singapore, and many people thought that gave them some legal protection. But they still have servers based in the US. MegaUpload had a similar setup. Their corporate offices were abroad, but still had US servers. At least Astraweb isn’t going out of its way to put a giant target on its back, but there is some reason to worry that Astraweb will one day have to speed up its DMCA processing.
I think Usenet is still somewhat on the periphery when it comes to anti-piracy targeting, but obviously the threat to Usenet, particularly to US based servers, coming and growing larger every day, SOPA/PIPA or not.
Usually, if you’re running into completion problems, it’s due to a DMCA takedown. They’re usually pretty easy to spot if you have an NZB completion checker. I like using NZBcc the most.
Using that software, I checked an NZB that I knew would have had a DMCA takedown on Giganews. If you look at the segments, the first segment or two will be missing in a DMCA takedown. Even the pars have missing segments. Although, I’m not sure why there are still 3 complete files. Maybe the DMCA takedown notice was just sloppy.
For this one, there are enough PAR2s to repair the RAR archives. If the uploader had only uploaded PAR2s with 5% redundancy, wouldn’t have worked since even the PAR2s are damaged by the DMCA takedown.
If it was just regular problems with completion, you’d see random segments missing. If it’s always the first segment, you can pretty much bet your money that it’ll be a DMCA takedown.
Sky has become the latest UK ISP to block access to Newzbin. The Motion Picture Association won a legal battle that forced BT to block access to Newzbin. Now other ISPs are doing the same.
The blocking is SOPA-esque. If you know the IP address or even just edit your host file, the blocking in ineffective. Already we can see how ineffective this style of blocking is at keeping people from accessing black listed sites. The blocking is so simple to get around, that you don’t even need to get a VPN to get around the block.
Honestly, this only serves to give Newzbin free marketing. With newer, better, and automatic indexers already out there, there is little reason to even use Newzbin. But now that it’s been black listed, everyone will want to see what the fuss is about and that can only add to more money to Newzbin’s account.
Giganews is seen as the best Usenet provider in the market. They have the longest retention, big data centers, and high completion. At least high completion of articles that haven’t been hit with DMCA take-down notices. Giganews resellers, such as SuperNews, do very well by reselling the Giganews feed. Everyone knows that their servers are good and stable. On the other hand, they’re the prime target for DMCA take-downs. These are so rampant that many popular uploads are taken down from Giganews servers within a week or two of being posted on Usenet.
Although, Giganews doesn’t take down all of the posts. They only take down 1 to 2 parts of each segment. On the surface, this would seemingly allow downloaders to repair the files. Except that isn’t what is happening. People who are uploading files are not adding enough PAR2s to repair the corrupted RAR files.
Everyone suggests that 10-20% redundancy is what we should be aiming for with PAR2s. Many posters are only going as high as 5%. If you have a backup server, this isn’t the end of the world. Your NZB downloader will just pick up the blocks that are missing on Giganews. Granted, you’re kinda wasting money by having to constantly rely on your block account. It’s usually pretty easy to just jump ship anyways.
What really confuses me is that many uploaders seem to know that their posts will be subject to this kind of take-down. So they’ll add enough PAR2 blocks to repair having 2 parts of every file taken down. The only problem is that they don’t take into account that 2 parts of every PAR2 file will also be taken down. So you end up with not enough pars to fix everything.
When you’re making PAR2s, just set it for 12% redundancy and be done with it. Maybe people will just make the switch to another Usenet provider that isn’t a prime target for DMCA take-down notices. No one wants to see their block account dwindle away.
Everyone is getting worried about SOPA (Stop Online Piracy Act) that is in congress at the moment. The main threat is using Chinese style DNS hijacking by ISPs to keep people from accessing sites that the MPAA/RIAA don’t want you to access. Sites like MediaFire seem to be the primary, at least the first, targets of this legislation.
If Mediafire, and the likes, are on the target list, then Usenet can’t be too far behind. On the surface there isn’t that much of a difference between the two services. Except that Usenet is heavily indexed. Many Usenet providers don’t seem to comply with DMCA requests, and Rep. Bob Goodlatte seems to think that DMCA take-down notices shouldn’t be relied on anymore.
Astraweb is based in Singapore, outside US jurisdiction. It will be interesting how the respond to pressure if SOPA passes. The MPAA/RIAA won’t be able to take down any Usenet provider, but they would be able to force your ISP to poison the DNS results so that you wouldn’t be able to access the site.
This is exactly how other countries, like China, try to block social media sites to squelch dissent. Thankfully, there are easy ways around this problem. The easiest would be to simply enter in the IP to access the site, bypassing the need for a DNS server. You could even edit your host file for the same effect. The other option is to not use your ISP’s DNS servers. I’m not sure if all US based DNS services would have to poison their DNS results. Using a foreign DNS server would get around the problem. I’ve always liked to use this list of public DNS servers.