Official BitTorrent Search Opens

starrsoft writes "The official BitTorrent search has debuted. The search engine was built by BT inventor Bram Cohen. The question? Will he get sued? The BT search seems to be down right now. (It'll really be down after this story is posted...) Spiegel has more (En): "Naturally other sites such as Bitoogle, Isohunt, SuprNova or Torrentspy have tried before, but either they became fast a goal of legal attacks on the part of the industry or they furnished rather durchwachsene [??] results. BitTorrent search however proves with first tests [that it is] as...Google...fast. The results come from a large number [of] more well-known and unknown... sites, and...permits sufficient restricting to the inquiry, in order to obtain really relevant results.""

Comments

Speedy

[AKAImBatman]

BitTorrent search however proves with first tests [that it is] as...Google...fast.

So fast that the browser times out on a search for "mozilla". Hopefully they'll get those kinks worked out soon. :-/

Bandwidth generously provided by Hot or Not

That explains everything. ;-)

Will he get sued?

I still think that anyone trying to sue Bittorrent or a generic search engine would have a hard time of it. Bittorrent has so many legal uses that it just isn't funny. Here's some example of legal torrents:

Privateer Remake
OpenOffice
Star Trek: New Voyages (legal fan made)
FreeBSD
Star Wars: Revelations (legal fan made)
Xandros Free Edition
Mozilla Firefox
Doom 3 Demo
America's Army (now for Linux and OSX)

I could go on, but I think you get the point.

Re:Speedy

[MoonBuggy]

Although BitTorrent is demonstrably usable for many non-infringing purposes, it would be naive to think that this search engine will have anything less than 50% (as a conservative estimate) legally dubious content indexed. To follow from that, however, I think my post from the previous discussion on this search engine is relevant:

I'm interested to see what is and isn't worthy of a lawsuit. This search engine is now three steps removed from the (assumed) copyright infringement.

Uploading music from within a country where that is outlawed seems to be fair game for legal action now (although countries where a fee is paid on blank media have a fairly strong case for to say they've already paid) and it's been that way for some time.

More recently sites like Suprnova and BTefnet, who provide no copyrighted content but do provide information on where to get it in the form of trackers, have been subject to successful legal action.

This search engine will now provide no copyrighted content. It will not tell users where to get copyrighted content. It will (presumably) tell users where to get information (.torrent files and their associated trackers) on where to get copyrighted content. Is this enough for a case? I'm really not sure it is.

Could I be taken to court for handing out [illegal item] - yes. Could I be taken to court for telling people that Joe Bloggs on the other side of town can put them in touch with someone who will give them [illegal item] - I wouldn't think so.

Re:Speedy

[dougmc]

This is the reason I threw all my Metallica shit in the garbage. Fuck Metallica!!

Of course, this did nothing to actually fuck Metallica. In fact, it probably made them money rather than lost them money.

How so?

Well, if you kept your Metallica stuff (music, T-shirts, videos, I assume), then in the future you might decide that you just don't care for Metallica anymore. So you sell it. And the people who bought your used stuff might not buy new stuff from Metallica because they just bought your stuff.

But now that you've thrown it away (it's destroyed, presumably), this cannot happen, and now somebody will have to buy new Metallica shit, lining Lars' pockets with even more gold.

Good job!

Re:Speedy

[h4rm0ny]

Don't underestimate symbolism. Aside from expressing how he feels to himself, he expresses to many others how he feels. A band depends on other people for its worth. Actions like this diminish it, even if it doesn't cost them a few quid immediately.

Re:Speedy

[mspohr]

You may find it interesting that Metallica has a lakefront house near where I live. They are having constant hassles with people because they keep trying to close "their" beach even though the beach is public access up to high water mark. This is the same as their attitude on their music... greedy.

Re:Speedy

[grmoc]

The whole "no-reverse engineering" provision is pretty dang scary to me.. .. So I'd say it wasn't a good law by any stretch of the imagination, because it enforces vendor lock-in, which -may- have absolutely NOTHING to do with defending copyright. .. The prime example of this is the DVD region stuff. The main reason to do this, from a market perspective, is that you can sell to China at a lower price than in the U.S., and those people in the U.S. are prevented from playing those chinese discs on their american dvd players, regardless of whether or not those discs were legally purchased.

There are other problems.

use gnutella?

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder why people haven't been using many of the other p2p applications out there, particularly the decentralized ones, to search for .torrent files. Or am I just crazy?

Re:help mee

[AtariDatacenter]

"I don't understand? The search engine doesn't work! It just sits there and does nothing!"

My boss just walked by. He said that he has the same problem with some of his employees. [oops!]

I think he'll get sued but...

[CSMastermind]

I don't think the legal efforts against him will be successfull. Here's why:

When Napster was sued they actually had content in their possession. Not the case here. Even if they were able to prove that you could get content from the network, you aren't technically scearching for the content you get. You're scearching for torrents, which are small files with no real copy righted data in them. They're little road signs that point you where to go. It would be like getting arrested for creating a phone book just because you might be able to find the number of someone who has drugs in the book.

Durchwachsen

[slavemowgli]

"durchwachsen" means "marbled" or "streaky" when applied to meat, but can also be used figuratively, meaning "mixed", "so-so" etc.

Read the ToS

[Turn-X Alphonse]

Look at the ToS, it has some.. intresting stuff.

2. Online Conduct

You agree that you will not use the Site or the Services:

* to develop, generate, upload, post, display, transmit, disseminate or store information that: (A) infringes any third party's intellectual property or other proprietary rights, including, but not limited to, using third party copyrighted materials, without appropriate permission, using third party trademarks without appropriate permission or attribution, or using or distributing third party information (whether or not protected as a trade secret) in violation of a duty of confidentiality or otherwise; (B) is or, in BitTorrent's sole discretion, would have the tendency to be, defamatory, libelous, harassing, pornographic, an invasion of privacy, obscene, abusive, illegal, racist, offensive or harmful or otherwise objectionable; (C) constitutes unsolicited promotions, advertising or solicitations for funds, good or services, including junk mail and spam; (D) otherwise violates this Terms of Service in any way; or (E) obstructs or otherwise interferes with the normal performance of another person's use of the Sites or the Services;

Seems they are covering a few legal holes.. but will it stand against RIAA/MPAA's pack of lawyers?

BitTorrent.com is also using filetype:torrent!

[imtheguru]

I'm surprised that in 150 odd posts, no one has bothered to check the page source.

from http://bittorrent.com
(emphasis mine)

function sendheader(searchtype) {
var searchstr = document.search.searchtxt.value;
if (document.search.rdfile.checked == true) {
--------> searchstr = searchstr+" filetype:torrent"; <--------
document.search.action = "http://ms128.mysearch.com/jsp/GGmain.jsp?searchfo r="+searchstr;
document.search.submit();
}

So, BitTorrent search is using MySearch.com to perform 'filetype:torrent' searches. This also explains the presence of the MySearch news links.