From: don-aitken@freeuk.com 
  
 On Wed, 22 Jun 2005 12:35:24 GMT, "punchfast"  wrote: 
  
 >I'm not sure if this is the right group to ask this, but if not maybe 
 >someone can direct me to the proper group. 
 > 
 >IN newsgroups that have downloadable files, ( music, movies, pictures, 
 >software) is it possible for these files to be monitored or tracked? 
 >Couldn't the Recording industry be monitoring the groups of music or movies 
 >and capture the IP addresses of those Downloading or Uploading copyrighted 
 >media?  They did it with Kazaa, why not the Usenet? 
 > 
 >thanks for any insights. 
 > 
 In practice the answer is no, because news is a distributed system, 
 whereas a website has a specific and easily discoverable location and 
 owner. There are copies of these files on thousands of news servers 
 all over the world, and the only record of who uses them is in the 
 individual server logs, which are normally  only kept for a few days, 
 if that. 
  
 -- 
 Don Aitken 
 Mail to the From: address is not read. 
 To email me, substitute "clara.co.uk" for "freeuk.com" 
  
 --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05 
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