Usenet indexer hit with an injunction

THE MOVIE STUDIOS have won an injunction for copyright infringement against Newzbin in Blighty.

Mr Justice Kitchin ruled in the High Court in London that Newzbin had provided a "sophisticated technical" system which allowed its customers to download top films and infringe copyrights.

According to UKPA, the movie studios got an injunction stopping the downloading of Newzbin's inventory via the website. Apparently they are going to be making a claim for substantial damages later. Given the movie studios previous history their "substantial damages" are likely be about the same as what the US spent to bail out the Wall Street banks.

Film studios Twentieth Century Fox, Universal, Warner Brothers, Paramount, Disney and Columbia told the court that they took the action to combat the huge and growing Usenet indexing phenomenon. Usenet indexing sites help subscribers download large collections of files in one swoop.

Mr Justice Kitchin said Newzbin is "focused on piracy in that it locates and categorises unlawful copies of films and displays the titles of these copies in its indices". Users can search for particular illegal copies and provides a simple one-click mechanism to download unlawful copies.

Newzbin claimed that it was only doing what Google does and it was not involved in illegal downloading. However downloading from the website was restricted to premium members who agreed to pay 30p a week to Newzbin.

But the movie studios did not get it all their own way. The robed and wigged one refused another injunction that would have compelled the site to stop indexing all copyright-infringing material posted on Usenet, no matter who owned it. Kitchin said that such an injunction would not be appropriate.

By refusing to grant such an injunction, Kitchin set a precedent for section 97a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

This was the first time this section had been used and it gives the courts the power to "grant an injunction against a service provider", if the service provider knows that someone is using its service to infringe copyrights. The law does not specify what kind of restrictive action is covered by such an injunction.

Kitchin said that the claimants were "seeking an injunction to restrain activities in relation to all binary and all text materials in respect of which they own no rights and about which I have heard little or no evidence. He did not believe that the defendant has actual knowledge of other persons using its service to infringe all such rights. Kitchin added that the rights of all other rights holders were undefined and consequently the scope of the injunction would be very uncertain.

In other words the law can only be used to shut down activity by someone involved in a trial and if the copyright holder had presented something called evidence. It can not be used by the movie studios to bring in blanket bans without any evidence. µ