Hugely popular torrent indexer Mininova has been slapped with a debilitating ruling, in the Netherlands: Within the next three months, the site has to remove all links to infringing torrents, after which it’ll be fined 1000 Euros for each one. This means that Mininova will either a) become the premier torrent indexer for Linux ISOs and public domain FLAC music, or b) die.* More »
Ever since New York’s attorney general specifically targeted newsgroups and usenet for child pornography (which is deplorable), there’s been a backlash of ISPs dropping support for the network altogether. Crunchgear lists Time Warner, Verizon and Sprint either cutting off all support or limiting it to various non-binary categories, making people who access usenet for an easy way to download free movies pretty angry. Will ISPs dropping it mean the start of a slow death of usenet as a whole, or will third-party usenet access sites (which charge fees) keep it alive for a while yet? [Crunchgear]
