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."

Comments

Bah....Bah

[muppetman462]

First it's the Pirate Bay, then Mininova, Newzbin, and now IsoHunt? Where or Where are we to get our stuff from? Itunes?

Re:Bah....Bah

[spazdor]

Have you been having trouble finding pirated content on TPB yet? 'Cause I sure haven't.

Re:Bah....Bah

[Reason58]

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?

Re:Bah....Bah

[SwordsmanLuke]

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.

Re:Bah....Bah

[NeutronCowboy]

Legality these days is determined by the depth of your pockets and the size of your lawyer-army.

Re:Bah....Bah

[WhatAmIDoingHere]

"the content is 99% copyrighted material"

The only content on those sites is .torrent files, which are not copyrighted material.

Re:Bah....Bah

[mweather]

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.

Re:Bah....Bah

[commodore64_love]

>>>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.

Re:Bah....Bah

[Bacon Bits]

What do you mean "these days"?

Re:Bah....Bah

[Mathinker]

> 99% copyrighted material with no distribution rights from authors

Google is in the same spot, unfortunately, unless you believe that not blocking their spider in robots.txt is equivalent to giving distribution rights. Somehow I don't think that's going to fly in court ("fair use" might).

By the way, if your idea would fly, it would be practically impossible to run a site which distributes legal user-created content: the minute this site became a threat to Big Media's profit margins, they could easily pay for it to be "DoL"-ed (that's a "Denial-of-Legality" attack, when they pay third parties to upload enough illegal content to make it possible to sue and shut it down).

After all, Big Media has already been caught uploading its content to YouTube via third parties in a way to make it appear illegally pirated. I wouldn't put it past them to try this "DoL" shtik.

Re:Bah....Bah

[Rolgar]

Check out your local library. I've been using the library for about a year now. My library's selection is probably comparable to Netflix (I've recently watched several older movies like the Godfather series, and some WW2 era movies, the X-files series, soon going to watch the Farside), and if they don't have something, I've actually had pretty good success about requesting that they buy items I want and having them acquire them. My library actually has an Annex just for the older videos that they don't have on the shelves right now, and I have access to all of this material that I neither want to pay to watch one time nor want to store, I'm protected against my kids scratching disks.

Now, I live a 25 minute round trip from our library, but once a week, they send a Bookmobile (bus with shelves) all over the county, and I can request that they send my requested materials out on the local Bookmobile, which is a 6 mile round trip, which is closer than my nearest video store. I have had a couple of items that were so scratched I couldn't watch the whole thing, but I just requested a new copy and put a note in the old one so they could remove it from circulation. You're probably paying property taxes (even if you rent, the landlord is paying some of your rent in taxes) to support a library and this is a far better option than paying for the video store (I also get all items for 1 or 3 weeks depending on the item, and cheaper fees if I keep it too long), risking getting sued, or buying it myself.

they come and they go but there is one constant

[krapski]

Pirate sites will go, and others will replace them, but there is a constant: like death and taxes, piracy will go on.

Re:they come and they go but there is one constant

[HungryHobo]

People have been saying that since the days when cheap imported sheet music was killing the American music industry.

In reality people will always do what people do- share art, music and culture with each other.(and pornography of course)

Re:They should more to a more civilized country

[green1]

If I do work today I don't continue getting paid for it 70 years after I'm dead... why should you?

Re:You mess with the bull, you get the horns

[mcgrew]

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.

Visit your local library

[fyoder]

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.