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MPAA Files Lawsuits Targeting Major Torrent Sites
diverge_s writes "Slyck news reports on a new wave of lawsuits the MPAA has filed against major Bit Torrent search sites including: Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub. From the article: '"Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous - they can and will be stopped," said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. "Disabling these powerful networks of illegal file distribution is a significant step in stemming the tide of piracy on the Internet."'"
From the article: The operators of these indexing sites appear surprised at the MPAA's decision to sue, as they have yet to receive any notification. "Funny, they didn't email me," Gary from ISOHunt said. "I'm not too concerned because we deal with copyright requests everyday, some of them from studios MPAA represents." "Justin" from TorrentSpy echoed Gary's skepticism. "I guess I will learn more when I see what they have filed exactly. [I'm] not sure why they are suing when we comply with DMCA requests but I guess we will learn more down the road."
http://www.sandstorming.com
NZB-Zone has been targetted along with binnews and a couple of others. It is interesting to note that they have only gone for nzb sites and not the actual usenet providers - they appear to have the same rights as ISPs when it comes to common carrier status, but I'm no lawyer.
An interesting but flawed philosophy. You seem to imply that if the IP holders were just scraping by and making ends meet, you would be happy for the torrent sites to be taken down?
Im just about making ends meet as a software develoepr, and one of my games is available as a torrent. No doubt this isnt exactly helping sales. So I suppose that the torrent sites you support check the financial data of each submitted torrent, will spot that I'm a solo developer who needs the cash, and decline to list torrents of my stuff right?
Bullshit. This is just freeloaders getting everything they can for free because they think they wont get caught. Dont insult everyones intelligence by dressing it up as some kind of robin hood tale.
Many things the **IA do is bullshit, but closing torrent sites that encourage illegal content is fine by me. Bittorrent is a superb system that works wonders for distributing game demos and movie trailers etc. By defending its usage to steal IP, your just going to bring the whole system down.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
Ever thought that perhaps your game just isn't good enough?
/. but there was an artivle that CD sales of the top 50 went down quite a bit while the studios still made more cash because people suddenly bought way more stuff that wasn't mainstream. So good music WILL sell. So will good movies and good games. Therefore I believe that if you're not happy with how much games you sell you might want to try and make a better one next time.
I'm not saying everyone out there downloading from BT is a saint who just wants to try before they buy. That would be bullshit. But there are enough people out there who doubled or even trippled the amount of money they spent on DVDs and/or CDs and/or games just because they found games they've never even heard about before.
I don't remember whether it was on heise.de or
I know this might be moderated Flamebait, but you know what? I don't care... if people don't like my opinion, it's their problem entirely.
I know your comment was a joke, but actually in many countries there's a tax on blank media that goes to content providers. So...in many cases, blanks DO count.
To fight the war on terror, stop being afraid.
Dear MMPAA. It is time for you to sit down and chill a bit (grab a beer or something.) - you should know by now that stopping people from copying digital information is a futile effort. I know this is your job, and I know that you are working very hard on this, but it is not an effort that's going to lead to any regime where pirated movies does not exist. Just ask the guys working against music and software piracy.
So, while you sit there contemplating on the situation and what you do, you should ask yourself. Why is it that people are pirating movies? Let me give you two answers; well, the most obvious one, to save money. What can you do about this? Lower the price of theater tickts and DVDs? - Well, I don't know for anyone else, but I don't think my reason would be money.
Next one, the big one, availability, this is a major issue. You've become a lot better at distributing movies fast, atleast the movies that brings in a lot of money. But there are still people who prefer to watch their movies at home, and there are places that doesn't get the move at their theater until months after it has been shown and talked about elsewhere in the world.
Personally I think that if you provided an online service without your silly DRM, one which people could download your movies themselves and pay for it, people would. I know atleast I would. You have implemented means to stop people from doing this, like DVD zones, movies being released at different times in different parts of the world and you're releaseing the dvds a lot later than the theaters has shown the flick.
So, what I am suggesting is that you stop chasing kids downloading your materials off the net. You should still go after the profit makers, nobody likes them anyway, but above all, if you want to stop piracy, you gotta beat the pirates in terms of availability and quality of service.
You can transfer my consultant fee to my paypal account now.
Search engines are not illegal in the USA.
Trust me, you would not want to be an "Information Location Tool" which include "a directory, index, reference, pointer, or hypertext link" without complying with 512 d) of US copyright law. It might not be illegal but otherwise you're liable for anything "referring or linking users to an online location containing infringing material or infringing activity". These torrent sites would have to be blind, deaf and dumb to not know they're pointing to lots of illegal copies - and even that is not enough by b) "in the absence of such actual knowledge, is not aware of facts or circumstances from which infringing activity is apparent;" In short, the torrent sites stand no chance in freezing hell to get covered by the same protection as e.g. Google.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
The legaltiy would depend on the opinion of a judge, who will be influnced by the big bucks of the industry. Are you willing to take the chance and lose your entire income trying to fight what is 'right', even if you win?
I bet no.
And i dont agree you can have a legal search engine for prostitution ( where prostitution is not allowed that is ). We just had one guy closed up for doing just that in this area. They took his site away too. Something about 'intent'.. You know, 'intent to commit a crime?' . Just beacuse its on the net doesnt mean that factor is tossed to the wind.
---- Booth was a patriot ----
But you can't beat THESE guys...
http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php
By reading this signature you agree to not disagree with the post you just read.
That is correct. The case in Canada is remarkable.
First, the Canadian Music Industry said "Well, we can't stop online pirating, so we will propose a bill to tax all blank media", which basically included everything from hard-drive, USB sticks, and, of course, blank CDs and DVDs. The bill was passed and the levy went into effect.
About a year later, they said "Well, we *can* stop online piracy, so we will propose a bill that makes it illegal and we will make additional income from legal bullying and litigation".
My biggest problem with that, is that they "forgot" to remove the levy. So now, file-sharing is basically illegal, *and* you have to pay a levy on any media "just in case". Another thing that pisses me off, is that in Canada, you must be considered innocent until you are proven guilty, but that is obviously not the case since you must pay up-front just in case you might be guilty.
The problem I see is that they take down legal content in the pursuit of pirated DVDs. Why should the BT community that isn't pirating DVDs be paying for the abuse of a few?
With the approach the MPAA applies, bars, clubs, etc. would be shut down when a couple patrons are arrested for drug dealing or prostitution because they're "enabling" the illegal activity. For some reason, there doesn't seem to be a lot of precedence for the *AA approach of shutting down entire businesses when pursuing a few criminals.
I do not fail; I succeed at finding out what does not work.
It's one advantage to being a cartel^H^H^H^H^H^H assosciation. It's always "the RIAA" or "the MPAA" doing the suing. The individual companies aren't being assosciated with the bad publicity. If you started seeing "Sony sues grandpa without computer" or "Vivendi sues 13 year old girl", then you might start getting some reaction to the bad press. As it is, the MPAA is sort of like a meta-corporation. Corporations exist to limit the risk to individuals involved in the corporation. The MPAA exists to limit the risk to the companies involved in it.
Just because you're paranoid doesn't mean there isn't an invisible demon about to eat your face
Many rants about how "Search engines aren't illegal", etc. Blah blah blah blah blah.
The point that I think is being made here is that search engines that end up being used virtually exclusively for the finding of materials that are illegal _OUGHT_ to be illegal, and that's why the MPAA is working at shutting them down.
You do not, for example, need to use one of the mentioned torrent search sites to find the latest Linux ISO images. I feel fairly confident in saying that the actual number of legal torrent files out there that could be not be found without using a search engine that predominantly indexes to illegal content (that is, copyrighted content which is being shared without the copyright holder's permission) is staggeringly tiny (although I similarly somehow would not doubt that some slashdot readers will take it upon themselves to cite a few examples in response to my remarks that will somehow "prove" this assertion to be incorrect).
So by the reasoning being proposed by the MPAA here, taken to its natural conclusion, if or when Google indexes substantially more infringing content than it does legitimate, and if and when that is predominantly what the engine is used for, then even Google would be shut down.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
"After that happen, you'd be surprised how much of artists you liked are in fact are indies and has no relation to the RI/MA Ass. of America. What's more they'd be happy to know that you have downloaded their song/movie - and thus learned about their existence. And if you liked them payed visit to concert or show."
This seems to be the ongoing line of thought around here - that after CDs are produced no more because no one can sell them, artists will make their livings through live performances.
I wonder, of all the millions of iPod owners out there, how many have never gone to a live show or concert? I haven't been to one in over 15 years.
Lots of people don't want to go out to hear music. They want music they can take with them and listen to when they want to. If they have that, a lot of them are going to be satisfied with that.
Steve
A work that expires before its copyright never enters the public domain and thus enjoys eternal copyright protection.