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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.
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.
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.