CRIA Files Massive Canadian Suit Against IsoHunt

An anonymous reader writes "After claiming for years that Canada has lax copyright laws that can't deal with downloading, 26 record labels have secretly filed a massive lawsuit against isoHunt. The suit was filed three weeks before Canada introduced the Canadian DMCA, yet the industry did not disclose the suit and regularly claimed it was powerless to do anything about the site."

Comments

Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[unity100]

you can lie, you can deceive, you can screw customers, you can fraud, you can scam, but still in the end you can come up right, because they are allowed in the system - you just need to arrange your ToSes, legal clauses properly, and have a good legal team that the unwashed masses wont be able to buy.

Re:Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[Pax681]

LOOK they should sue google! all you do is type the following "filetype torrent tron" and it'll go a torrent searching.....

so why don't they sue google? coz google probably has better lawyers than they do and certainly has better lawyers than isohunt

Ugh...

[andreyvul]

This shit again?

Seriously, if downloading was hurting the labels as much as their FUD machine states, then I'd find a way to pay for a T3 line and use it solely for seedboxing purposes.

Because I will get a huge smile on my face once this scourge goes broke, fucks off, and dies, preferably in burning cyanide.

Re:Ugh...

[erroneus]

It hurts their future plans.

Look. When all this really started happening, the publishers insisted that they had no plan, intention or desire to do anything over the internet. The rest of the world said "fine... we will." and the consumers around the world started to consume. The publishers took notice. They didn't see "loss" because there never was any. What they saw was "people publishing with little to no overhead."

THIS is what the publishers want -- the market for media and content published on the internet. It's cheap to publish and they want to control it. Trouble is, the genie is already out of the bottle and they are trying to stuff it back in with law suits. Funny thing is, they turned a fringe activity into a mainstream one with their law suits against P2P sharing software makers. Suddenly, a market was made famous by legal actions and the mainstream took notice. Before the Napster and other suits, P2P sharing was more of a fringe activity. Now it's a huge part of the usage of the internet. (was that an eventuality or was the streissand effect at play?)

So yes, it hurts the content publishers in the future sense. It does not hurt them in the present sense. They have great difficulty "proving" they are hurt in the present sense and it is impossible to prove they are being hurt in the future sense. They want to control publishing on the internet and everything they have done so far seems to indicate that desire. Being able to accomplish that goal seems, at the moment, pretty impossible. But they are continuing to buy laws and politicians and making our lives a LOT more difficult and unpleasant in the process.

But didn't they say our copyright laws are weak?

[SkepticalJ]

From http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/5636/135/: "The lawsuit may come as a surprise to politicians and other observers accustomed to hearing that Canada does not have the legal tools to address online infringement, yet that perception has always been more myth than reality. As the isoHunt lawsuit demonstrates, the legal power to combat online infringement has existed within Canadian copyright law for years. It has been the industry’s reluctance to wield those powers – not their absence – that may have allowed infringing websites to call Canada home."

Let them win!!!

[future assassin]

Since isoHut is just a search engine any win for the record labels would royally fuck search engine usage in Canada. Just like with UBB consumer rage will follow, which really sucks that it has to come to that in order for joe average to notice they are getting a Shaftner.

Re:Let them win!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is they were not distributing. You keep saying that and others implying. They were linking to torrent files. Even hosting torrent files is not hosting pirated content. It is also not up to them to determine the legality of content. It is the poster. The editor did not post it. It is up to the copyright owner to point out what is unauthorised. That is the idea anyway. Contributory infringement can be argued. However if you understand how this work they were not infringing any copyright. At best they were encouraging people to infringe. However it has not been proven that they knew it was infringing. Until you have a report brought to you by the copyright owner you can't know if it was or was not infringing. Otherwise they would have to verify with the copyright office who the owner is and vet every single torret on the net. That is insane. Google does not have to vet sites for copyright. Only remove when they are notified of it. Even that is questionable. It has only gotten so far in the courts as to if linking is infringement. The closest we have is a Napster case. Maybe 2600 although that didn't get very high up in the courts. It could have been appealed and was not. If Google links to sites which infringe they are not liable. Merely linking to content is not infringement. Nobody clearly notified ISOHunt of any of the posted files.

This...

[Barrinmw]

...is why I don't buy music.

Re:Characterizations

[whoever57]

BTW my friend is about to be signed, here's a song about how difficult the industry has become. If a hottie with pipes like this going unsigned for 10 years doesn't convince you that piracy is killing the industry, nothing will.

Why connection is there between this unsigned singer and piracy? In your post, I see only unsupported assertions on a connection between piracy and risk-taking.

I suspect that the problem for artists is that there is always another artist who is just that little bit more desperate to be signed. Labels love control and they sign the artists that can be most easily controlled. Those artists that are created by labels -- how much does the money distribution favor the artists versus the labels, when compared to an artist that has already established some level of support and fame? In other words, there is a strong financial incentive to create and sign acts rather than discovering artists. .

This post is full of speculative suggestions, but I will assert that it has as much evidential basis as yours (ie. none!).

Re:Characterizations

[Scarletdown]

BTW my friend is about to be signed, here's a song about how difficult the industry has become. If a hottie with pipes like this going unsigned for 10 years doesn't convince you that piracy is killing the industry, nothing will. Gene Simmons called her "the best unsigned singer out there", she's being called "Amy Winehouse without the baggage" and "a super-hot Susan Boyle" by industry-leading agents and label reps.

She seems talented enough that she should not need to rely on being signed by a label. She can make it fine on her own, one would think.

Re:Characterizations

[mini me]

Something doesn't add up. Gene Simmons has his own record label. Why would he turn down the opportunity to sign, by his own admission, the best person he can possibly work with?

Re:Cheapskates

[Spad]

...the onus is suddenly placed right on the copyright creator to prove the infringement.

Isn't that kind of how the law is supposed to work? You know, the guy making the accusation has to prove that the other person did it (to whatever standard is required by the court), otherwise you end up with things like the retarded libel system we have in the UK where you can accuse anyone you like of anything you want and if they can't prove that they're not guilty then you win, regardless of what evidence you have.