Newzbin lost their case v. Fox, Universal, et al!

Thank you media companies! Now I’ll watch less of your product-placement-filled garbage and get more real projects done. Free! Finally, I’m free!

You’ve sued yourselves off the Internet — now stay off. Good work, keep it up.

[Update: Oops, sorry, that link is behind a paywall. Here's the text of the decision. Here's the copypasta press release from NZB:]

We are very disappointed with the judgment. Regrettably the court has accepted the distorted and flawed evidence that Hollywood presented. Contrary to the finding of the court our site has not deliberately sought to index infringing material, nor to assist those of our users who use it for that purpose. The site provides a generalised search facility for binary content found on Usenet and not just infringing material. Any of the material we index can be found on any one of thousands of sites on the Internet so pursuit of us is a futile waste of everyones [sic] time and money.

Sadly the MPA are stuck in a technology stone age. Rather than addressing their own broken business models & monopolistic commercial practices they seek to curtail innovation and freedom on the Internet. It is notable, for example, that the MPA are the sponsors behind attempts to introduce Chinese internet censorship into the UK through the Digital Enterprise Bill. Perhaps if they used their energy providing what people want, rather than buying laws to sustain their own house of cards, they might have a stronger future. We certainly reject their attempt to use this decision and our site as an excuse for rushing through undemocratic laws in a wash-up [Jack: Linkage mine.] just before an election.

We lacked the limitless legal funds and legions of lawyers the MPA had and that is the only reason for their win. That said, we are looking at our grounds of appeal and how we move forward to continue to provide innovation and useful search resources for our users.

Ultimately, the dinosaurs of the content industry will need to face reality; the sad thing is that winning cases such as this only damages them and puts their own future in doubt.

Newzbin is usually invite-only but has now dropped that requirement and stopped charging until the index can be moved to a friendlier jurisdiction. Now is a good time to sign up. User records weren’t examined by the MPA because Newzbin doesn’t keep records — the only thing they track is your membership, not which Ubuntu releases you download.