The recording industry was handed a victory Tuesday when a federal court found the company overseeing the Usenet user group guilty of copyright infringement.
"There can be no dispute that defendants' services were being used overwhelmingly for copyright infringement," Judge Harold Baer, Jr. of the District Court for the Southern District of New York, wrote in his opinion.
Fourteen record labels, under the auspices of the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), sued Usenet in late 2007 for distributing copyrighted music on its site.
The Usenet discussion forums date back to 1979, and allowed users to post and reply to messages on a host of topics. Sierra Corporate Design purchased the usenet.com URL in 1998, and the formal Usenet.com, Inc. was formed in 2004 under the direction of director and sole shareholder, Gerald Reynolds.
Users can purchase subscriptions to access Usenet content, which vary in price from $4.95 to $18.95 a month. Customers who pay $18.95 get unlimited downloads.
In mounting its defense, Usenet cited the Sony-Betamax case, which held that Sony was not responsible for copyright infringement perpetrated by consumers who bought its Betamax machines, as well as the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA). This act includes a safe harbor provision that does not hold the owners of Internet services responsible for the illegal acts of its users.
Usenet appears to have shot itself in the foot, however, by destroying evidence.
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