Newzsearch is no more.

Hi, on May 19th 2010 I’ve decided to shut down Newzsearch once and for all.
This has been a very tough decision for me, but cause of the very unclear legal situation, I don’t want to wait for some media industry cunts to shoot me in the face. Instead I just perform a clean cut and end this service.

So far I didn’t have any legal troubles, mainly because I never placed any actual links to illegal content on my site. Also I disabled nzb downloads after a short test period, cause to me it was pretty clear that nzb files are too close to torrent files. And torrent files have always been a legal risk. Newzsearch was a fully automated search engine, no manual entries whatsoever. It was more like a regular web engine, except for the missing links. Also a reason for the lack of trouble might be that Newzsearch actually has never been a big player compared to other services like newzbin.

Anyway, almost eight years ago, I started development on Newzsearch and by then I was one of the first to create such a service. Eight years! Most people realized that there’s something like the internet about 15 years ago. So Newzsearch has been around almost 50% of the internet time ;)

Newzsearch has never been about the money. It barely covered the server costs (which nowadays are very low fortunately). And the willingness to donate is not so high any more. I got about $200 worth in donations in total(!!). So all in all Newzsearch has always been a project based on my idea that information should freely accessible. I designed the site to be a low maintenance site and except some functionality updates and design changes the site is the same it was eight years ago. My job as a game developer wouldn’t have let me enough time to do it differently anyways.

But now I would have to put some more work into the site, because the amount of data posted on the usenet has grown in ways that my current update process can’t handle that properly. And I don’t want to invest more time into a service that eventually has to be shut down cause of legal reasons anyway.

Currently I’m pretty sure I’m on the safe side. No downloads, no links. But with those lobbying pussies pushing for tougher rules in the current ACTA negotiations, I’m not sure it stays that way.

It’s really sad, but nowadays we live in a kind of Internet-China. You cannot really say what you want, otherwise you’ll be killed. Not literally, but that’s only, because US lawyers found a way better way to destroy someone than just putting a bullet in his brain: just sue them into oblivion. That’s totally cool, because you get a lot of money and you don’t even have to get your hands bloody. But you destroyed an existence nevertheless.

Newzsearch is my baby and I love it. But now I’ve got a new one, and it happens to be a real baby, and she’s way more important to me.

I’ve been the Jacob on this island for a very long time, now it’s time somebody else takes my part.

I’ll keep the domain cause I really like the name, but if you want to rent it, just contact me: info (AT) newzsearch.com

 

~~ Peter (May 20, 2010)