NZB & Usenet Downloading

In July 2012, American ISPs will begin cracking down on file-sharing. Offending customers will be warned and punished in a “graduated response” system similar to California’s criminal “Three Strikes” law where repeat-offenders get very long prison sentences after their third offense.

The Six Strikes program has been kept quiet since it was agreed upon a year ago. So, nobody really knows how it will work. Many observers speculate that it will only affect BitTorrent traffic, but what about Usenet?

Unlike BitTorrent, when you download from a Usenet server, there is no “swarm” – just you and the server. So, third parties hired to look for offenders cannot legally observe your traffic. However, if your ISP wanted to monitor you, they could do so very easily.

Usenet does not have built-in compression, error-detection, or encryption. In it’s default mode, Usenet data is transferred as plain text, and is easy to read by spies. In practice, files are compressed with RAR, and encoded with yEnc (or other methods) before being transferred. But of course, your ISP could easily decode, and decompress files if it chose to.

However, many Usenet servers and client programs like SuperNZB have implemented SSL. It’s pretty much a standard feature now, and will prevent your ISP from seeing what you are downloading. However, if you use an NZB-indexing website that doesn’t run HTTPS, your ISP will be able to see the NZB files that you download. Would that be enough for them to issue a warning? Probably not, but nobody really knows yet.

Once Six Strikes goes into operation, we will see how it works. However, that won’t preclude it from being expanded in the future. So, it seems wise for Usenet users to switch on SSL, and keep it on. And maybe use a VPN when visiting NZB-indexing sites.

Victorious anti-SOPA forces are still on the march and conducting mop-up operations. Reddit has spawned a political action committee (PAC) called TestPAC which is going after Representative Lamar Smith who introduced the SOPA bill into Congress. See the story here.

Wikipedia announced that it has completed the transfer of all of its domains from SOPA-supporter GoDaddy to MarkMonitor. See the announcement here.

An historic wave of internet protest has defeated SOPA and PIPA. And now attention has turned to former Senator Chris Dodd, who is chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). Dodd went berserk when his bought-and-paid-for congressmen didn’t stay bought. Here is the quote that got him in trouble:

“This industry is watching very carefully who’s going to stand up for them when their job is at stake. Don’t ask me to write a check for you when you think your job is at risk and then don’t pay any attention to me when my job is at stake.”

That quote will be repeated forever as a prime example of “former politician turned corporate lobbyist and trying to ram through Congress laws written by corporate lawyers rather than elected lawmakers.”

Dodd now faces a potential bribery investigation, if this petition on whitehouse.gov page gets enough signatures.

Call your senators! Reddit has phone numbers here.

DNS provision pulled from SOPA. See Tom’s Guide story here.

Public serpents are walking-back SOPA. See Ars Technica story here.

It’s too early to declare victory over SOPA. See Fast Company story here.

The White House now opposes SOPA and PIPA. See TPM story here.

President Obama is unlikely to veto SOPA, if it passes, because he gets millions in contributions from Hollywood. See this page.

Does your congressman support or oppose SOPA? See this page.

Will Google, Facebook, and Twitter go offline to protest SOPA? This page says that they are discussing it.

If you want to boycott companies that support SOPA, install this Android app on your cellphone and scan bar-codes at the store.

Stop SOPA! Save Usenet!

Usenet companies are able to operate because they are protected by the “safe harbor” provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998. But now, the new SOPA legislation may do away with that safe harbor. See the DMCA section of the SOPA Wikipedia article.

If you enjoy Usenet, now would be a good time to make your congressional representatives aware of your feelings.