Slashdot Mirror
IsoHunt Shut Down?
psic writes "One of the most popular torrent search sites, IsoHunt, was taken down on tuesday. The owners of the site say that the move came from their ISP without prior notice, though it is probably linked with the MPAA's lawsuit against various torrent search sites earlier this year. They plan on moving ISPs from the US to Canada, and say that moving the servers so someplace like Sweden or Sealand is not an option, as they put it: "BitTorrent was created for legitimate distribution of large media files, and we stand by that philosophy as a search engine and aggregator."" This is a story we've heard before with other sites, only serving to further demonstrate that playing wack a mole with torrent aggregators isn't the solution to anything.
The more you tighten your grip, Tarkin, the more star systems will slip through your fingers
All well and good until your ISP throttles all bandwidth for unapproved services, where "approved" services are ones sanctioned by the RIAA/MPAA, and which also pay a tithe to your ISP.
With the end of network neutrality, it could easily happen.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Hey! It's perfectly legal for me to time shift a TV show using a blank tape and a VCR. Why would it be illegal to time shift the same show with a torrent site and a computer?
Torrents generally encompass people-shifting, which isn't quite legal...
Shutting down a large torrent site is a flawed strategy because it forces users to look up alternatives, strengthening many other sites. It's like a hydra. You cut off one head seven other heads grow back.
Its frustrating to see sites take the fall for things that aren't their fault. Holding isoHunt responsible for people downloading illegal content is stupid.
They created the site specifically to allow people to download illegal content. And, with the ads, they profited from it.
"The **AA are subhumans (more or less) who are trying to create a supply and demand situation where the demand is greater than the supply by choking off all supplies but their own"
Oh dear. you REALLY think that statement is true?
firstly, they are not 'subhuman'. secondly, there is nothing preventing you going home right now, writing some music or making an amateur movie, and releasing it free on the web. The fact that you don't bother, but would rather make illegal copies of other peoples work instead, speaks volumes about the issue. They are not restricting the supply of entertainment. not even vaguely.
If you really gave a damn about the issue, you would avoid *evil RIAA* content entirely and stick to free content, or purchase your content directly from the content creators. Either way, downloading hollywood movies from isohunt makes their point, not yours.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
What tripe. Copy != Stealing.
Copyright is an arbitrary ARTIFICIAL law -- whose time has come and past. Why is illegal? Because the government says so; and who creates the government? The people, and the people clearely are showing that it's an archaic hold-over when information was a scarce commodity.
Sharing is caring. That's the best kind of (free) advertising you can get!
Cheers
I'm afraid that's just how people are going to think (not that I disagree either) as the corruption and greed in government/corporation grows more obvious every day. And it's this exposure that the they are trying to control or stop if possible, while the copyright crime spree continues. They are setting themselves up for a real disaster. This is why groups like IBM are calling for "reform". The ground could collapse from underneath at any moment, and they have a helluva lot invested in the status quo. I'm calling for a "copyriot". Copy and distribute everything you can get your hands on.
What?
We're talking about law here. You people keep saying "they made it for illegal downloads" and "look at the name" and blah blah. These are assumptions and opinions, nothing to do with what is legal. IsoHunt and any other torrent search engine, whether it's name be illegalstuffonly.com or totallylegaltorrents.com, is providing a search engine for torrent files. They're not the ones ripping and sharing The Da Vinci Code (as far as we know). They're not the ones creating and sharing the illegal content. It's not practical to assume they can monitor the legality of every torrent that reaches their engine. I can't see how, from a legal stand point, anyone but the sharers can be held responsible.
I looked at your site, and it looks like you create good games and deal fairly. I'd be willing to bet that most insightful /.ers, anti-DRM stance notwithstanding, would view you as one of the "good guys." Of course you have a right to be paid for your work. Since you sell it directly, I'm happy to pay you for it. I hope many others feel the same.
My problem is that I find it socially irresponsible to fund media cartels who manipulate the legal systems of various countries in an effort to artificially inflate prices and maintain a monopoly over the distribution channel.
Is that more irresponsible than pirating content? I don't know; I honestly struggle with that question. I do not believe that "information wants to be free" means that people are entitled to take and enjoy the creative works of others without paying. Doing creative work is partly an act of investment, and like any other, one of the rewards can be passive income after the work is created. Some seem to believe that people should be denied rewards on that investment if their trade happens to be creative works. I don't agree, and I don't think that view represents the majority, either.
But along the same lines, I don't believe those who control the market for content creators' products (payola, etc.) are entitled to misrepresent the revenue stream on their balance sheet & rip those artists off, either. I don't believe corporate entities are entitled to retroactively rescind the public domain status of works that have passed into that domain. I don't believe that media corporations are entitled to force internet and satellite broadcasters into using expensive, proprietary streaming formats by legislatively mandating "approved" DRM frameworks. And I don't believe that distributors or creators are entitled to multiple payments for each device I wish to use my purchased content on. Except for a few bright spots, what we've got right now is a crap system, IMO.
Ultimately, I hope a system evolves that enables me to be a good customer of the artists I like and feel good about it. You going independent is a seedling of such a system; I hope something resembling an aggregator of your distribution system becomes the norm instead of the alternative in the near future.
Pi Ran Out
Clearly you have never created anything you hold valuable.
I'm going to have to stand up and give my unpopular opinion here. Copyright does have its place. People SHOULD have the right to retain ownership of things they worked hard to create. They SHOULD be allowed to choose what happens to what they have created. If that means letting a limited number of people seeing it, if that means only allowing it to be seen in certain galleries or theaters or sold in certain stores, if that means charging what they feel is a fair price for each reproduction of that work, if that means not allowing other people to distribute their work freely then they have the right to that - for a finite, and fair, amount of time. I create stuff. I write stories. One day, I hope to publish and make money from what I write, which is why not everything I write is freely available online. I don't want people to randomly copy and paste my stories elsewhere without asking me. I'm lenient, but I draw the line at people who profit themselves from it, or don't give me due credit. Is that so bad? Don't I have the right to draw that line?
The argument is this: the movie studios and recording companies believe that they are losing staggering amounts of money from piracy. They believe - or have convinced themselves - that EVERY downloaded song or movie is a lost physical sale and therefore they SUE indiscriminately, for appallingly disproportionate sums and prison terms (decades in some cases), to make it so that the general public FEARS piracy.
But the fact of the matter is: when you copy me, I may lose sales - or, I may not. But I also gain a wider audience for my work. And through that wider audience I may gain sales - more than I originally lost (whatever that number is). If I am an artist and I created solely so that people could see my work, then I lose NOTHING. If I am a businessman and created solely for profit, I MAY lose something, or I may gain something.
The pro-piracy argument here is surely not that "all information should be free, everything you ever created should be available to everybody for no cost and they shouldn't have to pay you". That's insane. The argument is that choice should be with the creator - something the internet has facilitated, to the **AA's chagrin.
I'm beginning to ramble so I'll stop here.
qntm.org
But it obviously should be legal, at least in the case of media that's broadcast for free - that is, media that the receiver could've recorded himself.
I can record The Office and watch it later at my home, if I want to spend the time to program my VCR. But let's say I'm busy or technophobic: I can pay someone to come to my house, set up a VCR, and program it to record The Office, right? Nothing wrong with that.
Now take it one step further. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office using his VCR, and bring the tape over for me to watch? It saves him the hassle of coming over to my house just to push a few buttons on my VCR, and the end result is the same: I watch the show later, on tape, instead of live.
Now, one final step. Tapes are a dying technology. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office at home, encode it as an AVI file, and send me the file over the internet? The effect is exactly the same as bringing over a tape, which in turn is the same as recording it myself - I'm just delegating the work to someone else who's better at it, or at least more willing to do it. The fact that I'm paying is irrelevant; he might just as well decide to do it for free, and in fact that's what happens every day on the internet.
We can extend the same logic to music that's broadcast over the radio: I can record the song myself and listen to it again, so therefore I should be allowed to have someone else record it and send me a copy. It's nothing that I couldn't do myself, and there's no sensible reason to force me to do it myself when someone else is willing to do the work for me.
Visual IRC: Fast. Powerful. Free.