Usenet (an abbreviation of “User Network”) allows users to post messages on various subjects that are posted to servers on a worldwide network. Each subject collection of posted notes forms a newsgroup - of which there are several thousand.
Stephen Robertson, a fan of Ellison, scanned his work and posted it to the alt.binaries.e-book newsgroup. Robertson was also sued by Ellison, but settled the case out of court.
Ellison argued that AOL’s conduct was analogous to that of Napster. The court disagreed. In granting AOL’s motion for summary judgment last week, Judge Florence-Marie Cooper noted that AOL’s servers were “just one hop” on Usenet’s distributed network and that the company was protected by the Digital Millennium Copyright Act which provides that, in effect, an ISP is not liable for disputed material on its servers if it removes it when notified.
The ruling was important for ISPs in the US. AOL has been a Usenet peer since 1994 and the company estimates that its peer servers receive 4.5 terabytes of data in over 24 million messages every week from users.