US judge: Giganews is not liable for infringement of usenet users

Usenet provider Giganews is not liable for possible copyright infringements of its customers according to a US court. The case against Giganews was brought by a publisher of erotic magazines.

According to publisher Perfect 10, Giganews would not have cooperated with dmca takedown requests, but a federal judge in California ruled that the company had submitted the takedowns incorrectly to the Usenet provider, TechDirt writes. It would be screenshots of a Usenet client and some search terms that would refer to copyrighted material with the ‘instruction’ that Giganews should remove all search results. In dmca requests to usenet providers, so-called message ids should be mentioned that refer to binaries in newsgroups.

The judge found it unproven that Giganews directly benefited financially from offering Perfect 10 content. In addition to acquittal for so-called direct infringement, indirect infringement was also considered unproven. According to the judge, usenet users who upload such content are liable and not the provider of access to newsgroups.

The trial lasted a total of three years. Perfect 10 has already sued several tech companies, including Amazon, Google and Rapidshare. The publisher stated that the companies would facilitate copyright violations.