A New York judge has ruled against newsgroup aggregator Usenet.com, saying the online service is guilty of direct, contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, and of inducing others to infringe. He also criticised the company behind the service, its directors and its owner Gerald Reynolds for, he said, deliberately hindering the legal process by wiping hard drives and sending key witnesses on paid holidays to Europe to avoid having to testify.
Usenet.com doesn't exist just to provide links to unlicensed music and film content, though more and more users have used it in part for such things in recent years. And, while the amount of piracy enabled by Usenet.com is not as significant as, say, The Pirate Bay, it particularly pissed off content owners because users pay a monthly subscription to access the aggregator service. The labels began formal legal proceedings against the company in 2007.
It's not clear what the results of the ruling will be in terms of damages and the future operations of Usenet.com, though it provides further case law that stresses that websites which provide links to infringing content, without actually hosting any of the content themselves, can still be liable for infringement claims.
The judge specifically denied the right of Usenet.com directors to use so called 'safe harbour' provisions in US copyright law designed to help net firms avoid liability for any illegal acts committed by their customers - though their attempts to circumvent the legal process was probably primarily behind that decision.
Welcoming the ruling, the Recording Industry Association Of America said yesterday: "We're pleased that the court recognised not just that Usenet.com directly infringed the record companies' copyrights but also took action against the defendants for their egregious litigation misconduct".