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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.
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.
I wholeheartedly agree that, from the perspective of the **AA, playing wack-a-mole isn't a good solution. But as an observer it's pretty funny.
More seriously, I think it is providing a long term solution, just not the one the **AA want. As these stories grow they continue to be seen as the greedy bullies they truly are. The main purpose of the RIAA and MPAA these days is to do the dirty work for the actual labels/studios and absorb the backlash. People get mad at the RIAA, not Sony. Or so the strategy goes. As anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA sentiment grows in severity and spreads into the mainstream, there will start to be bleedthrough to the actual labels and studios.
So basically the wack-a-mole strategy is the best education we could hope for that IP laws are a disgrace, that greed is the real motivator of DRM, and that DRM does nothing but create a nuisance for the consumer without effectively harming pirates. I want more and more of your average Joes to hear about stuff like this and start asking "What is with these guys anyway?" The answers will lead to some sensible IP reform.
It's a long-term goal, and I realize that in the meantime a lot of innocent people are having their lives ruined, but I think that tactics like this go a long way towards the final solution for DRM.
-stormin
The Southern Baptist Convention has creationism. On Slashdot, we have porn.
Good one, probably a little bit better than TPB for a few files. I also liked their "mod choice" or whatever it was called. They actually approved certain files so you knew you weren't getting dummy info. they also had a ton of trackers for every torrent.
I hope they go back up soon. I liked them.
In Soviet Russia, dots slash you!
They get turned off in the US so they move to Canada how is that proving a point instead of moving to Sweden or some other country where it isn't sketchy. Is it that they just got a good offer from Canada or are they trying to jump ship from the states.
Wouldn't a bigger statment be to stay in the states cause that seems ot me what they are trying to do.
It just seems somewhat contradictory to move from the States to Canada and then say we won't move to Sweeden because its too easy?
I hadn't heard of that torrent site, but just as a test I googled this:
"king kong torrent"
try it, and check out the top links (the top two are from isohunt)
That was just the first hollywood movie that popped into my head.
It may well be that isohunt carried a lot of perfectly legal torrents, but any torrent site that carries a huge amount of copyrighted stuff is going to be attacked by the people owning the copyright. If you really want to support legal p2p, you need to make damn sure your site is absolutely rigorous when it comes to filtering out illegal content.
In an ideal world, the anti-DRM, pro p2p crowd would be the very people who were actively moderating sites like these and keeping them clean of illegal content. As it is, nobody is going to take seriously any claims about such sites being mostly for legal use.
DRM-free indie games for the PC and Mac: Positech Games
torrents are just the hurricane katrina of the internet.
Cripes, I *WISH* torrents had that sort of speed. :-\
BTW, I fully admit to being a looter. I know the law. I just don't give a shit. In a world where our government is selling us out to another country, where illegal aliens are given more rights than citizens, where some soccer dude can get handed a quarter of a -*BILLION*- dollars for playing a game, why should I be a nice little nobody who follows all the rules? Fuck all that. It's every man for himself from this point on.
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I don't think Laches applies, as that implies prejudicial delay. Sure, if you wait around and then try to sue someone for billions of dollars in damages, the court may tell you to piss off. But it's not clear if that applies to cases like these.
And it appears estoppel only applies if an infringer was given the expectation that their acts are condoned. Clearly, that's not the case (ie, massive advertising campaigns, etc), so I don't see how that would apply.
'course, this is all speculation from a lightly informed spectator, so perhaps you have a more educated take on the situation.
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It's just kind of the nature of politics.
It's kind of the nature of law.
ISOHunt et al are essentially moonshiners. There's no will in the US to change the law to make it legal to trade someone else's work without their permission. (If you think I'm wrong, go ahead and start a Constitutional Amendment. It worked for Prohibition.)
What's interesting is that RIAA/MPAA are "getting it", and are starting to focus on promoting and working with major players. It's only a matter of time until the hardship of finding a "free hit" is greater than the "hardship" of going to the market leader.
Weren't there sections on the site, to help you find movies, TV series, applications, warez, etc?
It's hard to claim that they didn't know they were providing torrents for illegal material if they categorised it for users.