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."

Comments

Is there a way for a US judgement to be enforced?

[IshmaelDS]

I mean ISOHunt is in Canada, can this be used to shutdown ISOHunt? or is this mostly about posturing?

Re:Is there a way for a US judgement to be enforce

[Sirusjr]

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.

Huh?

[TubeSteak]

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?

Re:Huh?

[Adrian Lopez]

I wonder how American proponents of such a principle would react to an American citizen being sued and convicted in China for posting information that China considers illegal to a US website that is nevertheless available to Chinese citizens.

Re:Huh?

[John Hasler]

About the same as they did to a USA company being ordered by a French court to cease "violating French law" by selling Nazi memorabilia on its USA Web site.

MPAA Pretends to Write International Law

[RobinEggs]

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.

Re:International "Commerce"

[tepples]

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?

Most BitTorrent sites submit entries to Google

[Orion Blastar]

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.

Re:International "Commerce"

[shaitand]

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.