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IsoHunt Guilty of Inducing Infringement
roju writes "The MPAA has won a summary judgment against torrent indexing site isoHunt for inducing copyright infringement. Michael Geist notes that '[t]he judge ruled that the isoHunt case is little different from other US cases such as Napster and Grokster, therefore concluding that there is no need to proceed to a full trial and granting Columbia Pictures request for summary judgment.' Attorney Ben Sheffner, who worked on the case for Fox, explains some of the implications, noting that 'the most significant ruling in the opinion was the court's holding that the DMCA's safe harbors are simply not available where inducement has been established.' This case could have implications on other indexing sites, and creates a gap in the DMCA safe harbor provisions that could have far-reaching implications on other sites."
I mean ISOHunt is in Canada, can this be used to shutdown ISOHunt? or is this mostly about posturing?
letting an idiot know they are an idiot is not a game... it's a responsibility. - by Kristopeit, M. D. (1892582)
Well even if it was enforceable, ISOhunt can always appeal the grant of summary judgment and perhaps the appeals court will reverse and call for an actual trial.
A U.S. federal court in California has issued a summary judgment against Canadian-based isoHunt (and its [Canadian] owner Gary Fung)
Why is a US Court adjudicating a case involving a Canadian citizen and his Canadian website?
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Why are you all surprised that a case against a canadian was heard in California?
The MPAA have pretended for the last decade that US copyright law has worldwide jurisdiction, and their attorneys have generated lawsuits or cease-and-desist letters reflecting this belief. Dreamworks sics the DMCA on Pirate Bay
Between the EU and the MPAA there's always someone trying to concentrate their own power by making their favorite local laws the international rule.
Say a foreign country bans use of encryption without a license. So is every HTTPS site in the world in violation if it doesn't firewall off all the country's IP ranges?
so will the MAFIAA then sue Google for caching the Torrent entries and listing links to them in their search engine?
Don't believe me, do a Google search by adding the word "torrent" to any downloadable product type.
Google "$show torrents" sometime and see what happens.
Google "Windows 7 Ultimate torrent" and see what happens.
Google "Elvis torrent" and see what happens.
Did you find some links to torrent sites and entries that allows a person to download a torrent? Google is becoming a massive torrent search engine. But the MAFIAA won't sue Google because they are too big a target and have expensive lawyers on their side.
All ISOHunt and other torrent sites are just search engines like Google, but they differ from Google in that they host BitTorrent trackers and torrent files.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
People may be illegally importing said material into the U.S. but ISOHunt is doing what its doing in Canada and therefore falls under their laws.
If you download a file from a Canadian server then you acquired the material in Canada and imported into the U.S. That's on you, the importer.
He might not be able to travel to the US without the risk of being arrested and prosecuted.
Remember that Russian guy Dmitry Sklyarov[1]? He was arrested in 2002 in the US for an DMCA offence that he committed in Russia and which isn't an offence according to Russian law. While he was eventually allowed to go home, he was still subject to prosecution in the US.
[1] http://www.freesklyarov.org/
That means it is *benefiting* small shops and indie artists as well as the big corporations, actually. You completely misunderstand/misrepresent the dynamic. Grey-market downloads, *particularly* those from "small shops and indie artists" increase their exposure and (if the content isnt total crap, and the seller doesnt shoot their own foot by making the product for sale obviously *inferior* to the grey-market version) drive sales up, not down.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
You think practice is going to help these folks? You sir, are an optimist of the most impressive degree.
Yes. Practice, plus vastly cheaper production costs, and you can get some great story telling.
For example, check out this faux BMW cargasm commercial that's been kicking around for a couple of months.
Other than a few nitpickers flipping out about turbo sound effects for a non-turbo model, the online BMW community can't get enough of it.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ADNb0F0YjNI&fmt=35
It was shot over a weekend by a couple of guys and put together for only a couple of thousand dollars. I know this because the girl in the video is my niece, a professional model with more a few credits to her name, and that couple of grand included her regular fee too.
I'm not saying torrent sites shouldn't be moderated, just that the site's owners should shy away from doing it themselves. Any site of sufficient size can be reasonably moderated by its users and there are plenty of ways to allow users to flag bad torrents. Also, I don't see any problem with having generic "top 20" lists for specific categories (preferably user generated); you just shouldn't (effectively) call them "Top 20 Copyrighted Hollywood Blockbusters" as you are acknowledging and condoning their existence.
The fact that the dot-torrent files automatically cause content files to be downloaded and assembled (see also supra Part II.A) rebuts Defendants’ assertions that users’ act of downloading dot- torrent files does not constitute actual copyright infringement. It may be true that the act of downloading a dot-torrent file is not itself a copyright-infringing action; but once that dot-torrent file triggers the process of downloading a content file, copyright infringement has taken place. Because dot-torrent files automatically trigger this content-downloading process, it is clear that dot-torrent files and content files are, for all practical purposes, synonymous. To conclude otherwise would be to elevate form over substance.
It amazes me that we can have a guy bound and shipped to our country that never stepped foot in it (at lest not related to his "crime"). What arrogance on our part, no wonder people think we are f***bags and want to kill us. Our culture of laws sucks a**. Some guys want to smoke some stuff that grows in the ground to feel a little better and our nanny a** state has nothing better to do than to tell them what to do and ship some guy across the border for selling some seeds. I would freaking leave but we made every other county in the world little America's and now their draconian laws sucks a** too (see above guy gets exported for selling seeds from his country). Sometimes freedom is worth more than prosperity.
Hey moron 5there is no extradition for civil cases.
But you can reach any assets he may hold in the states, any income he receives from the states. For a Canadian, that can pinch.
I would like to think that when iron-fisted copyright proves to be a failure, we will learn from this and find more reasonable approaches. But the utter failure of Prohibition hasn't stopped us from implementing similar laws. I would like to believe that a cultural war has been won, that when the old guard retires those who replace them will have a more enlightened viewpoint. I truly want to believe that. But I really don't see much precedent for it.
Every law advantages one group while disadvantaging another. This is why we will always have new Prohibitions. This is not a reason to give up hope or be cynical! We are in the middle of a social revolution that has few outward signs. Unlike generations past, the revolution that is happening now exists in fragmentary communications and a collectivistic movement that lacks any real core. It seems to be created by an unspoken understanding between its participants. That is to say, the participants of the digital community to varying degrees develop the same coping mechanisms to frame their understanding of this environment. These coping mechanisms develop into ideas and beliefs that we then form the basis of our interactions with other members. This doesn't require any indoctrination, or central leadership to accomplish. Mere exposure to the environment alone seems to predispose people to a certain kind of thinking that cuts across barriers of country, culture, sex, and race.
We have no real leaders for our digital culture, and yet the culture is there. This is unprecidented. There are very, very few social movements that organize around principals instead of individuals who exemplify those ideals. Whether you live in Iran or America, Africa or Europe, the same values systems are spontaniously developing. While the state of the art has advanced at an incredible rate, our methods of understanding and interacting within the new social spaces created by that aren't changing that much. It's a stable environment evolving at rate sufficiently slow to allow culture to form.
That, in and of itself, is amazing. Forget copyright for a moment and consider all the other social advances that are taking place because of our digital interconnectedness -- and then realize that there are only a very few friction points in this revolution! That is also unprecidented in modern history.
Copyright won't end anytime soon, but I'm suggesting we look at the fundamentals here: it is an artificial construct within the digital environment. It's something we built extraneous to it, rather than being a fundamental part of it. The exchange of information is fundamental to the existance of the internet. Copyright is not. Copyright is an institution, like marriage, the church, the government, etc. Like those things, it has a maintenance cost. It is a coping mechanism that's been developed and interposed between ourselves and our environment. That's not a judgement on its sustainability nor its justification for existance (or lack thereof).
Copyright is an institution and like all social institutions remain in existance only for as long as its members continue to support it. There is a substantial and growing number of digital identities (people, organizations, projects, etc.) that exist outside of that institution. Information is very, very cheap to replicate. Production of that information however can vary in cost. Everybody agrees that there must be some compensatory mechanism, however artificial, to reimburse people for the effort invested in the production of the goods and services that copyright protects. If there is no protection at all, many staples of modern life cease to exist. This is the loci of why copyright exists.
All I'm suggesting is that cost to society outweighs the benefits and we exist within a market bubble right now: A copyright bubble. Everyone's bought into it and driven up its cost, but like any market-driven force it will eventually return to equilibrium. We had the dot com bubble, but that's nothing compared to what
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Reality check: - Wealth makes right - Might makes right
Wrong. Wealth and might mean that you don't have to care whether you are in the right or not - you can just do what you please. However it does eventually catch up with you as resentment against you builds. Looking at history the lifetime of "super powers" has been continuously decreasing with the increase in communication. Rome lasted several centuries, the British Empire a couple of centuries and the US will be lucky to make it to one century.