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IsoHunt Told To Pull Torrent Files Offline
suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "The founder of popular Bit Torrent site IsoHunt, Gary Fung, has been ordered to remove the .torrent files for all infringing content — an order that could result in the site shutting down. US District Judge Stephen Wilson issued the order last week after years of back-and-forths over the legality of IsoHunt and Fung's two other sites (Torrentbox and Podtropolis). Fung claims he's still hoping for a more agreeable resolution that won't result in IsoHunt closing its doors, but for now, things aren't looking good for the torrent site."
Pirate sites will go, and others will replace them, but there is a constant: like death and taxes, piracy will go on.
Can't his site handle DHT instead of .torrent files?
That's not the point. It's quite clear that technical circumvents to law (like the whole .torrent thing) don't work like that. If your intention is to run illegal site you will be held accountable. It's not just exactly about .torrent files, it's about the whole system and purpose.+
That's not the point. It's quite clear that technical circumvents to law (like the whole .torrent thing) don't work like that. If your intention is to run illegal site you will be held accountable. It's not just exactly about .torrent files, it's about the whole system and purpose.+
In what way is this site "illegal" that does not also apply to a search engine such as Google?
Focus.
The thing that accused infringement-aiding sites have to prove is that they have significant non-infringing uses. This is obviously true for Google. It is not so obviously true for IsoHunt and others. Sure, you can find legal content (like the latest Linux distros and so forth) - but IsoHunt and its brethren are a) not the sole distribution method for aforementioned legal content and b) the amount of illegal content is significantly larger than the amount of legal content.
Any plan which depends on a fundamental change in human behavior is doomed from the start.
If I do work today I don't continue getting paid for it 70 years after I'm dead... why should you?
When people start infringing copyrights, they are attacking centuries of legal thought.
No, less than a century of legal thought, as before the 20th century copyrights had reasonable lengths. I wonder how much "pirated" material is older than 20 years?
Copyright is not about ownership, it is about a limited time monopoly to get creators to create. Jimi Hendrix will perform no more; his work should be in the public domain, as should anything else longer than the length of an invention's patent. Nothing made before 1990 should be covered by copyright, and if it wasn't I believe there would be little piracy.
I'm sure creativity would evolve much faster. Like technology, art is built on what has come before. Nothing is created out of a vacuum.
Free Martian Whores!
"the content is 99% copyrighted material"
.torrent files, which are not copyrighted material.
The only content on those sites is
Not a Twitter sockpuppet... but I wish I was.
>>>If your intention is to run illegal site you will be held accountable.
Isohunt doesn't run a tracker. They don't even host the actual torrent files. They simply provide a convenient search engine, and then download the torrent from the original source (example: from piratebay). It's like google, if google specialized in only searching for *.tor files.
Aside -
- I better hurry up and find a different source for my "NapisyPL" files. I like these files due to their tiny size (70 or 130 MB), but have no clue where they originated from. Time to find out before isohunt disappears.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
It's not the same thing, not even close to the same thing. Telling someone about something illegal or how to do it is not the same as doing it. The MPAA/RIAA is attempting and succeeding at rewriting the rules to maintain their existing business model. Copyright/patents protections were never intended to be a lifetime stream of guaranteed income by content organizations, they were meant to advance technology and innovation. That concept is gone and we are seeing the affects. Remember the safe harbor provisions that were acceptable a few years ago? That will be going away soon. Remember the VCR time shiffing issue? How about the home recording act changes to the copyright policy when DAT players started showing up (serial copy control)? The rules are changing.
Because it's clear what The Pirate Bay's, Mininova's and IsoHunt's intention is, and because the content is 99% copyrighted material with no distribution rights from authors.
99% of what Google indexes is copyrighted material, and they have no distribution rights from authors.
When I was a lad long, long ago we had no internet and only two tv channels. Usually there wasn't anything on worth watching. I read a lot of books.
Most cities have these buildings full of books and even media, which they seem perfectly happy to loan out for free. I'm not entirely sure what their business model is, but they've been doing this for as long as I can remember, so it appears viable, strange though that may seem. It might be time to rediscover them.
Loose lips lose spit.
>>>Google's intention is completely different and they act on removal notices.
So too does Isohunt. If a company says, "Stop linking to the *.tor file for my Hollywood Blockbuster," then Isohunt complies. It's just the same way that Google or Youtube operate.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
What do you mean "these days"?
The road to tyranny has always been paved with claims of necessity.
"Because it's clear what The Pirate Bay's, Mininova's and IsoHunt's intention is"
It's pretty clear what Google's intention of adding "filetype:torrent" to their search metadata is - to allow someone to find a torrent file without needing to go to those bothersome sites and search.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
It doesn't matter. Once you say "oh, it's 99% copyrighted anyway", you're basically saying that a site that has some copyrighted material (but isn't devoted to it) still deserves to be shut down. This would provide an easy way to take down any site that allows media uploads: 1. Upload copyrighted material, 2. Report it, 3. Site is taken down. It basically allows any site to be taken down for very weak reasons.
Yet Another Tech Blog
(but so much more, including game and movie reviews)
http://yanteb.peasantoid.org
Since one cannot read minds, the best way to determine intention of a service provider is to see how they react to take-down notices (and similar requests to cooperate). TPB was nailed precisely for that thing - they not only ignored them, they cataloged them (thus proving that they have received and read them), and then ignored them.
But, so far as I know, IsoHunt does respect take-down requests. In fact, it complies with DMCA rules for that. So long as they do that, I don't see why allegations of aiding copyright infringement should have any substrance.