Usenet may be older than dirt, but apparently it can be taught a few new tricks. While it's not news — no pun intended — that newsgroups are a great place to find music, movies, and software, Wired News is reporting on a new(ish) development: The NZB file. Here are the basics: Instead of having to download a few hundred thousand message headers to find the dozens of pieces that the file you want has been split into, sites like NewzBin (which created the NZB format) have indexed all those headers for you, and when you want a particular file you just download one NZB file which tells your newsreader exactly which messages you need to download. This older article from Slyck News has more, including tips on getting NZB files without subscribing to NewzBin. The tricky part is that unlike most P2P, for which you just need an internet connection, to get files from newsgroups you need a Usenet host which includes binaries newsgroups, and those you usually have to pay a small monthly fee for.

Jorge Cortell, a professor at Spain's Design Engineering Superior College, claims he was forced to resign by the college for presenting a lecture on the benefits of P2P. Cortell says the Spanish Recording Industry Association put pressure on the college by threatening them with software audits, and that after forcing him out, the college went on to deny that he had ever taught there. "When are we going to do something about it?" Cortell says in his blog. "We can't let them impose their failed, outdated, and inefficient business model through threats, pressures and silence."

Sweden, long a safe haven for file swappers, has just had its first anti-P2P measure enacted by parliament. The law, which goes into effect on July 1, makes it illegal to trade copyrighted material "without the payment of royalties." They've also mandated a price hike for blank recordable media to compensate, they say, for illegal reproduction. P2PNet has the scoop.

If you search for "Family Guy" on the popular BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy, you get a notice which reads 'This search query has been blocked at the request of the copyright holder, in compliance with the Digital Millennium Copyright Act ("DMCA")'. They seem to be aiming for the exemption in the DMCA which says companies which automatically index files cannot be held liable for infringement if they remove copyrighted files from their index at the request of the copyright holder. However, they seem to have missed the mark, since a search for just "Family" turns up dozens of episodes, and even entire seasons, of the show. Also interesting is that a search for "American Dad", a show owned by the same folks as Family Guy, doesn't return a DMCA notice.

Via Waxy Links.

Wired News has an interesting piece about recent action by the president of the French magistrates union, Judge Dominique Barella, who has been openly advocating the decriminalization of P2P file-sharing. Barella is startlingly level-headed, saying "when there is a problem with the application of the penal code on a large scale, the problem must be examined at its source." The IFPI (the international RIAA-alike) makes its presence known with this characteristically FUDdy blurb: "People still look at this as 'harmless, file sharing,' but the fact is that the effects are the same, or even actually worse, than a massive-scale organized crime piracy operation."

The FBI and U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) have executed 10 search warrants in the U.S. to take down "leading members" of the movie piracy group Elite Torrents. This is the first criminal raid the federal government has taken against a BitTorrent group. The FBI claims that Elite Torrents distributed more than 17 thousand different films which were downloaded 2.1 million times. CNN Money has the most assinine article on the raid which calls BitTorrent "Hollywood's version of the Napster scourge", and the Elite Torrents site has been hijacked by a hideous FBI notice.

You can read the ICE press release and, if you have more patience than me, enjoy some sort of 83MB promotional video (which they'd save a lot of bandwidth costs on if they'd put it on BitTorrent) they've put out about the raid (screenshot at left).

Via Boing Boing.

Last night on NBC Nightly News and today on the Today Show, correspondent George Lewis reported on the pirating of a copy of Revenge of the Sith from George Lucas' editing room. Boing Boing's Xeni Jardin is one of Lewis' guests, and you can download video of the Nightly News segment at Jackson's Junction. Jackson shares this choice quote from Xeni:

"George Lucas and Fox will get rich no matter how many times the movie is downloaded."

You didn't really expect it to stay dead, did you? As expected, though perhaps a bit sooner than, the MPAA has drafted legislation in the hopes of getting congress to give the FCC the "authority to adopt regulations governing digital television apparatus necessary to control the indiscriminate redistribution of digital television broadcast content over digital networks." Basically that would give the FCC the authority to mandate just about anything they wanted when it comes to digital television devices, which is far more sweeping than even the original Broadcast Flag mandate was. Head over to Boing Boing for Cory's commentary and Corante for some more details from Ernest Miller.

I've been watching this TV torrent site shutdown with great interest. TV episode sharers have always seemed like a different kind of beast to me. Folks who frequent TV-torrent sites do it for the sheer love of the shows more often, I think, than do movie sharers, for example. I have a feeling they're not going to take this lying down (which isn't to say that movie sites have). That said, here's my round-up of sites targetted by the MPAA yesterday, and what they look like now:

• ShunTV is permanently down, with a gracious message for its users and a brief message to the MPAA. Their forums are still alive, though, and mostly filled with folks overseas who really like The Daily Show (and know they'll never have the chance to buy it on DVD).

• ZonaTracker is still up and running, with no mention of the MPAA on the site.

• Scifi-Classics seems to be down.

• CDDVDHeaven seems completely unaffected and has this message on the front page:

  CDDVDHeaven and it's Host has not had any dealings with the MPAA as yet and the last time we did the site was allowed to carry on as we ourselfs dont do anything wrong in providing the site. This site does nothing More wrong then Yahoo and all other search Engines in the fact it provides links to other users offering a download from themselfs to you.To prove this fact do a earch on any search site and you will be able to download what you want direct or from torrents. There has been no Letters recevied at this time but this does not mean there wont be one ???? The site will carry on as always and will keep you posted. Any user wanting to delete there account can do so by following the FAQ page if so wanted. Dave @ CDDVDHeaven.

• Braggin Rights also seems to be down.

• And finally, #BT @ EFnet has been replaced with a generic Go Daddy "This domain coming soon!" page, and the domain has been placed on DOMAIN-LOCK. This might have been done by Go Daddy at the MPAA's request, or it may have been requested by the #BT folks in the hopes of keeping the MPAA from hijacking it. The associated IRC channel currently appears to be closed.

If anybody has any more details or insight about any of these sites, please leave a comment below.

I know it was inevitable, but it's still disappointing. The MPAA (whose many members produce most mainstream television shows) has filed lawsuits against six major BitTorrent sites with a TV sharing presence, namely ShunTV, ZonaTracker, Scifi-Classics, CDDVDHeaven, Braggin' Rights, and my personal favorite #BT @ EFnet. The lawsuits are accompanied by this absolutely horrid press release (PDF) which begins with the words "MPAA TAKES NEW ACTION AGAINST TV SHOW THIEVES". How truly awful.

Via Slashdot.

Broadcast Machine, the BitTorrent-enabled video publishing system from Downhill Battle's Participatory Culture Foundation (and previously mentioned here) is now available for download. It'll run on any web server that supports PHP (no MySQL necessary) and if the ease-of-setup of their earlier project Blog Torrent is any indicator, it should be dead simple to set up. You have until next month to get your Broadcast Machine video channels set up before the companion video player is released.

Microsoft has launched a new contest in the U.K. in which you can win £2,000 by making a short film about how intellectual property theft effects society. The name of the competition? "Thought Thieves!" (Okay, I admit I added the exclamation point myself.) The winner will be honored at a ceremony in London. I hope the finalists wind up on BitTorrent.

P.S. Does the neon logo give anybody else a Deep Throat kind of vibe?

Via Boing Boing.

Joi Ito has an interesting article about the Japanese animation franchise Naruto and how the P2P-based community which creates fansubs and trades shows has done nothing but expand the show's niche market. Instead of getting a tiny bit of money from every single person who watches the show, Naruto's creators are finding that file sharing has helped to create core base of fans who spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars each on DVDs and merchandise.

Wrong Planet, a community for people with Asperger's Syndrome, is running an interview with Bram Cohen, creator of BitTorrent, about the disorder. It's a short interview, and not really about BitTorrent at all, but rather about how Asperger's has affected Cohen's thinking, learning, and programming style. Here's a gem of a quote reminiscent of Cohen's previous comments:

I hate dealing with computers in general, so I'm typically OS-agnostic, I've most recently been abused by a windows machine, so I hate that the most for the moment.

Downhill Battle is helping musician Harry Bergund gather testimony from musicians who support file-sharing. He's going to take the voices of supporters and compose a song around them, and then presumably distribute it in some meaningful way that will raise awareness of the legitimate uses of P2P. If you're a musician who recognizes the value of P2P, head on over and lend him your voice.