User:Cartman02au/Binnews Dvdrs transcript

Please see Interview with Usenet search sites targeted by the MPAA for the published version and original reporting information.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has been accused of publically announcing that it has commenced action against a number of internet sites for alleged piracy prior to the defendents receiving formal notification.

Wikinews interviews the administrators of two of the Usenet related sites - Joe from Binnews and "descds" from dvdrs.net.

WN: How long have you been running your sites?
BN: Way too long. The days of working 18 hours have caught up to me. What was the question?
DR: We have been running for nearly 2 years this March.

WN: Why did you start your sites?
BN: We started it as a way to monitor what is on usenet. Our intent is not and never has been to facilitate piracy. Its quite the opposite. We have several guides that explain how binnews can assist a company in getting rid of piracy.
DR: We started the site as a community for people to discuss movies they loved, and hated, offer help to people with home cinema issues, discuss games and basically befriend members. We have evolved several times and have always kept a keen eye on the laws of both local and international authorities.

NZBS were adopted at our users request months after the site was launched and we have never been contacted by any legal bodied association anywhere to ask for their removal. There has never been a law passed anywhere, as far as we are aware, that states NZB files are illegal to host. Had there been, we would have dropped them and continue with other aspects of our site. DVDRS is not all about indexing Usenet and has a very healthy community discussion group.

WN: Another site upon which the MPAA is taking action against has said that they are yet to receive formal notification of the lawsuit, how did you find out? How did you react?
BN: We found out the same way as they did, but seeing it on several news sites. At first, I double read the article making sure we were not being punk'd. But then I was shocked that we had to read about it publicly first. As of today, we have yet to get anything.
DR: We haven't been informed by the MPAA and quite frankly are outraged by the method they have adopted to file these lawsuits. In actual fact we would still be non the wiser had our members and members of the press not have contacted us.

When we found out about the filed lawsuit we was first worried (after all we are only a small site with limited funds), then shocked and finally outraged. Had the MPAA contacted us anytime in the sites history regards their concerns we would have happily worked with them to gain a resolve. We have yet to have receipt of any paperwork or any contact with the MPAA regards this matter. 24 hours after the news broke we wrote an email to their hotline asking them to contact us so we could discuss their concerns. We still have no response from that email.

WN: Do you feel it is appropriate for the MPAA to publically announce that they have commenced action against your site and others before you even receive notification?
BN: We do feel they should have notified first. We do not even have a confirmation this is for real.
DR: No not at all. Again as we have stated many times, had the MPAA personally contacted us we would have happily listened to their issues and acted accordingly. We are doing nothing wrong legally on our site and to be made look like an established piracy ring is an outrage. We have worked extremely hard on site to keep within international laws and they have publicly destroyed everything we have worked towards in the last 2 years. We are receiving negative PR and this is totally unacceptable.

WN: Have you ever received a takedown notice from any company in accordance with the DMCA?
BN: Nope, we have never received a notice from anyone. My cell phone is tied to the site, we have proper DMCA guidelines on the site and no one has contacted us.
DR: No never. We would actively respond to any DMCA request quickly and efficiently. We fully support the law and would never try to evade anything within its scope. Had a DMCA been issued by any member, our site would have immediately deleted the offensive file.

WN: If you were to receive a take down notice how would you deal with it?
BN: We would act quite quickly. An email sent to the alert system is tied into all of "staff" members, my cell phone and my email.
DR: We would immediately delete the offending file on our server and conduct a thorough research into any files that may also be connected to the one mentioned. We would also respond to the request personally with a follow up email expressing our actions.

WN: Do you think the service you provide is any different to that of major search engines such as Google and Yahoo?
BN: No, you can goto any search engine and find just about anything.
DR: No. We index what is already readily available on commercial, tax paying, US based registered companies hard drives. All we are doing is pointing to files not on our network, much the same way google or any search bot operates. We do not host these files and without the premium paid service of third parties our marked up text based XML files are useless. We have never hosted illegal files and only offer information.

We feel that should the MPAA deem us illegal then they must also target premium paid Usenet Providers who act as the transit for these files. Ironically both Easynews and Usenetserver offer both indexing and carrier for these files and yet have received no such lawsuits filed.

<We also find it ironic still that Newzbin, creators, instigators and promoters of the NZB format and un-arguably the biggest Usenet Indexing site in the world have received no lawsuits filed. We feel that we are being rail roaded and are not at all happy about it.

We would like it known for the record that we are actively trying to reach a resolve regards this action by the MPAA. We have contacted them and said openly many times we would welcome their input and act accordingly. Should they feel that NZBS are illegal we will remove those sections immediately and await a legal judgement on their legality. DVDRS is not a pirate network and to call us such has insulted our member base.

I would also like it noted that although we host in the US i am actually a UK citizen who currently does not have to adhere to their communications and judgements. However, such is our resolve that I would happily comply should communication between us take place. We can offer little more to help this but hope that the MPAA retract their statement that we are an organised pirate network and restore our good name. Should the MPAA decide to not communicate with us and continue their legal actions we will instruct our attorneys and contact legal bodies like the EFF for help on this matter.

We hope to have contact with the MPAA soon to resolve this issue.
WN: If the MPAA were to be successful, do you think that it could open up action against those who actually host usenet servers? Do you believe that ISPs could be sued for hosting content they have minimal control over?
BN: Im surprised they didnt target them first. Cut the head off and there is nothing for us to index and report on. If the ISPs acted in a proper manner and did what they are more than capable of, we would not be assisting people in combating piracy on their networks.

Binnews also had this to say of the MPAA's lawsuit - "binnews does not host any files, the claim that we read "BinNews.com offers files for over 3,000 movies" is 100% completely false. We do not host any files, never have and never will. We provide a legitimate service to copyright holders. No where on our site does it say, "join us, we can give you free movies". We do not even have pre-made nzb files."

"MPAA launches seven lawsuits against torrent, ed2k and usenet sites" — Wikinews, February 24, 2006