IsoHunt Petitions Canadian Court For Copyright Blessing

A Cow writes "As an act of self-defense, the popular BitTorrent site isoHunt has decided to file a petition to ask the Court of British Columbia to confirm that isoHunt — and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis — do not infringe copyright. isoHunt owner Gary explains to TorrentFreak: 'Our petition summarizes BitTorrent technology, its open nature and a whole ecosystem of websites and operators that has developed around it, that CRIA does not own copyright to all files distributed over BitTorrent or on isoHunt websites, and we seek legal validation that we can continue to innovate within this emerging BitTorrent ecosystem on the Internet.'"

Comments

Sickening

[Vertana]

The idea that an intermediary trafficker can be held accountable for the files and data passing through it is disgusting. By this logic why aren't ISP's held accountable by law for child pornography passing through their servers? I hope IsoHunt succeeds in their endeavor and shows that government the flaw in their logic.

Re:Sickening

[matchlight]

I think it's closer to a phone book with "escort services" listed.

I know I'm dreaming

[perlchild]

But I'm hoping that in trying this case, the court takes into account the media levy and clarifies the whole thing, pretty far on the side of the consumer.

I hope this doesn't cause more damage

[martinw89]

I noticed they kind of act as though they represent the entire BitTorrent user base. I hope this doesn't cause more harm than good. On installing BitTorrent on a friend's computer, he asked "Is this legal"? My college's anti-getting-their-ass-sued-by-the-RIAA propaganda has already melted the minds of a lot of people around here to thinking that any kind of file sharing, regardless of content, is illegal. I hope this turns out well and doesn't backfire.

Re:I hope this doesn't cause more damage

[martinw89]

As someone in a similar situation, there's only so much I can do. I'm one geek, and because of this, some people assume I'm just swapping files all day.

The school, on the other hand, has really ramped up it's anti file sharing campaign this semester. In the science library, one of the rotating messages on the screen is "ILLEGAL ACTIVITY IN THE LIBRARY - Sharing files illegally is not allowed in the library or anywhere on campus!!". This is only so-so bad by itself. It gets worse though. They now scan all of our traffic in any publicly accessible campus location. They had been doing this in the dorms for a little while now, but scanning ALL traffic only started this semester. But wait, it gets even worse. There are these metal signs in common outside WiFi spots that show "MONITORED" and symbols for a laptop, a phone, and some other wifi device (can't remember which one).

It may sound like I am making this up. I absolutely am not. My school is on the farther end of the "We love you RIAA!!!" spectrum. Needless to say, I have an SSH tunnel ready the second I leave my off-campus apartment. I wish more people would do the same.

Re:The law has it all wrong.

[plasmacutter]

Another example: You are a state. You build roads and freeways. Someone is transporting illegal drugs around in a vehicle, using your roads and freeways to do so. Is it your fault or theirs? Theirs!

How about this? You build a road. You brag about how convenient your road is for transporting illegal drugs. You take steps to make it so the police will have trouble catching drug transporters on your road. Shouldn't you bear some of the responsibility for drug transport on your road?

how about a counterexample to your heavily loaded example:

you build a road, you place a checkpoint every 5 paces at which a dea agent takes the car apart piece by piece searching for drugs, strip searches all occupants regardless of age in full public view, and reserve the right to take your car to the crusher on the mere accusations of anyone on the road (good luck getting away with that obama bumper sticker if it's in georgia).

oh yeah.. that's how the law is today.

Re:The law has it all wrong.

[Anonymous Coward]

"You are a state. You build roads and freeways. Someone is transporting illegal drugs around in a vehicle, using your roads and freeways to do so. Is it your fault or theirs? Theirs!"

Congratulations, you just described and infrastructure provider. Or more relevantly, in this case, an ISP.

Now consider this. You are a company who sells a map of all of the best places to get illegal drugs, and who to ask for them. This is more accurately isoHunt, since they are simply a directory. They don't transfer any files, they offer very little to no infrastructure to enable the transfer. The freeways aren't theirs, but the map sure is.

Note: To pre-emptively clarify why I said "sells" the map, consider Advertising Revenue.

Re:The law has it all wrong.

[TheVelvetFlamebait]

Thanks for the analogy. Now it's a simple matter of seeing who's is more appropriate for the current situation.

And the winner is... the GP! He correctly identified that the target was not the ISPs, but in fact bittorrent and other P2P sharing software, and the things he mentioned were analogous to real life actions performed by companies behind certain P2P sharing software (e.g. bragging = advertising). All in all, it was a splendid analogy, and was only loaded because, well, some companies decided to load themselves that way.

As for your analogy, besides being wildly mis-aimed at the legal system in general, is also wildly inaccurate. In fact, so general was your attack, it's even a little hard to tell if this is analogy, or just a plain prophecy. Try again next week!

Re:paraphrased

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe it would be a different story if, whenever you saw a car, there was a 99.99% chance it was being used for a bank robbery.

Sad Sad Sad

[renegadesx]

I think its sad we live in a time where someone has to petition a court to say "we are legit".
Copyright laws have allowed greedy business execs go on witch hunts not seen since the Inquisition.

RIAA, MPAA and ESA go around bullying anyone they can trying to extort money, patent trolls filing lawsuits left right and center. It is truly a depressing age :(

Sincerly,
IsoHunt user

Levy

[Spc01]

Yes here in slovenia we have a levy on everything (no exceptions).
This includes: CD-R,DVD-R,iPOD,Hard Disk, VCR, GSM, GPS (because they can play mp3's), PC's (because they have disk in it), Mac's (because they have disk in it), Printers (because you could have printed some copyrighted lyrics), Photo scanners, fax machines, wrist watches (with disk in it), cameras, photo only cameras, flash cards, USB sticks, routers, Wii, Consoles .. etc etc.. because you just might copy an mp3 on an Canon EOS flash card.

I think this is just abuse of money .. why should i pay "SAZAS" (slovenian RIAA) money for a GPS receiver because it "can" play mp3's ? or why should i pay some tax on a DVD-R because i might copy a copyrighted content on it ? or perhaps copy whole album of mp3's to Canon EOS 40D flash card ?
If i pay for this kind of shit i expect something in return - i then have all the rights to copy anything because i payed for it ... so it kinda legalizes the right to copy anything and put it on the net .. or private use.