Forkbeard

I'll be glad to, since you asked in a civil and friendly fashion. It's the folks who shout insults at me (as they surely will in response to my answer) that I'm not interested in debating in detail.

That's not a fact. In fact, it's not what's going on. Yes, it appears that GUBA archives (fairly briefly) material from UseNet, and hosts some of that material on its own servers. Just as Google hosts a cached version of every site on the internet on its own servers. But GUBA bills itself as a search engine and archive, and what it's selling, in my view, is access to its search interface and archival services. I don't see how making money from a monthly charge is any different than making money by placing adwords ads nearby, the way Google does.

Well, it's my contention that they are misplacing their "upset" by directing it at GUBA. GUBA is just one of dozens of such interface services, and the content they index and archive is an unimaginably huge mixed bag. There are hundreds of thousands of images on GUBA that don't infringe anyone's copyright (yes, there really are images that predate current copyright periods) and there are millions more images that do infringe somebody's copyright, but that rights-holder is long gone from the market. Scans from a magazine that went bankrupt in 1953 are indeed under copyright, but unless the magazine is Playboy, who could hope to find the current rights owner in most cases? Content that's currently available in the market makes up just a tiny tiny part of the images that flood Usenet. For every post to content that infringes a copyright owner here on GFY, I could post a dozen images that infringe nothing. I won't, because it's unpaid work, but I could.

Attacking usenet index, search, and archival services is like attacking Google for crawling babe blogs of stolen nudie pictures. Google doesn't want or need that sort of sites in its index, but it can't do much until somebody tells them about it. It's insane to think anybody could pre-filter the entire contents of UseNet, and rather odd to suggest they ought to have to try. GUBA has a good reputation of trying to work with content owners who are willing to step up and identify inappropriate content; why not work with that instead of screaming and attacking? The true villian here is the person who rips paysite content and posts it to UseNet in the first place. I hate those bastards too, with as much passion as a person can have who's not a content owner.

I'm sorry you're having trouble, but it's really true to the best of my ability to discern. I'm not your lawyer and I can't write you a thirty page legal opinion with citations and footnotes and precedents, but I've talked at length with lawyers who can, including my own legal counsel. GUBA appears to fall squarely within the purview of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act and, as such, their compliance with that act and with appropriately-worded "notice-and-take-down" provisions provides them with all the legal cover they need.

I know it looks like that to you and to a lot of others here. But as I've said before, I consider that a fundamental misunderstanding of what GUBA's doing.

I can't speak to that, since I came to this business in 2002. But I do know there have been some major changes in the law -- especially the Digital Millennium Copyright Act -- since the time period you're siting. I'm not sure older precedents have that much bearing on the current discussion.

Because what they are doing is legal, and, in many cases not involving commercially available content, quite beneficial.

I respect your opinion on this -- indeed, I've always respected your input on this board -- but I can't agree with it, for the reasons stated.

I hope this was helpful to you.

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