Giganews sued

The lawsuit looks like bull to me (admittedly based on a TorrentFreak article), but this isn't exactly shocking. Giganews, and pretty much all other massive bandwidth Usenet providers, real business is helping users pirate content, though done in a way that still provides them safe harbor cover. Come on, anyone with any plan beyond the $4.99 plan is going to be used for binaries (and I'd be shocked into catatonia if they were getting most of their money from that plan), and what binary files would anyone want to download from Usenet? It's an incredible kludgy way to share files. The answer is: things that would get taken down or get you sued if they were distributed over less complicated and error-prone channels, i.e., pirated material (and porn, but the most of that is pirated too).

Look, any attempt to shut them down or hold them responsible would set a horrible precedent that would have a chilling effect on Internet freedom for years to come, but let's call a spade a spade.