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.

[Anonymous Coward]

Not very bright are you? Or the most obvious troll I have seen in a while.

This isn't like them going against Napster or anything like that, ISOHunt actually changed their site where you can't sort by type or anything like that anymore.

It infringes no more than Bing or Google now as all it does is catalog and search torrent files by name, leechers and seeders. It doesn't host or pick and choose them. I hope you never have to work on any jury or some innocent man is going to end up frying due to your ignorance.

Re:Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[Anonymous Coward]

Piracy and violating the terms of a license are two different things. Do try to keep up.

Re:Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[h00manist]

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.

Yes. And members of these unwashed masses who can see the origins of the problem have a responsibility to propose workarounds to their instruments of monopoly. There are many in my view, they all just require organization by lots of people.

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

Re:Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[commodore6502]

>>>Piracy.is infringing copyright by distributing copies or derivatives of a work without permission.

Let me see if I care.
(ponder)
Nope. As long as producers refuse to let me return shit like Transformers 2, Day the Earth Stood Still, Avatar, and so on, then I feel I have a right to Take action to not waste my money (i.e. to try before I buy). Every other industry in the world provides a return policy - why should music/movie makers be any different? (And don't bring-up reviews, which are bought-and-paid for by those same companies and therefore reviews are worthless.)

- "Grants of this sort can be justified in very peculiar cases only, if at all; the danger being very great that the good resulting from the operation of the monopoly, will be overbalanced by that the monopoly itself, in its original operation, may produce more evil than good [i.e. RIAA and MPAA]." - James Madison, author of the US Constitution.

"If Nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it. Its peculiar character, too, is that no one possesses the less, because every other possesses the whole of it.

"He who receives an idea from me, receives instruction himself without lessening mine; as he who lights his taper at mine, receives light without darkening me. That ideas should freely spread from one to another over the globe, for the moral and mutual instruction of man, and improvement of his condition, seems to have been peculiarly and benevolently designed by nature, when she made them, like fire, expansible over all space, without lessening their density in any point, and like the air in which we breathe, move, and have our physical being, incapable of confinement or exclusive appropriation. Inventions then cannot, in Natural Right, be a subject of property." - Thomas Jefferson, 1780s

Re:Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[c6gunner]

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.

Well, of course. As long as customers are willing to put up with your antics, why WOULDN'T you do such things?

The problem isn't capitalism; the problem is consumerism. People can bleat about the Big Bad Companies all they want, but as long as you keep buying those Miley Cyrus CD's and that Titanic Super Extreme Directors Cut Blueray Collectors Edition With 23 Bonus Seconds of DeCaprio Drowning, you ARE the problem.

Re:Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[blahplusplus]

"Yes. And members of these unwashed masses who can see the origins of the problem have a responsibility to propose workarounds to their instruments of monopoly. There are many in my view, they all just require organization by lots of people."

Problem is too many people are ignorant / apathetic, I always see people defending corporations and corporations rights over peoples, it's pretty disturbing how easily brainwashed people are.

Re:Aaaah. unbridled capitalism.

[shentino]

In other words, the GPL conditionally permits actions that would otherwise be illegal.

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.

Re:Ugh...

[Anrego]

It really doesn't seem like they have future plans at all.

What they want is to keep people on physical media. Rather than innovate and give the people what they want... they call out the lawyers and lobbyists and try to sue people into submission.

Here in Canada, there really is no sane way to legally download. This is mostly the fault of the CRTC/CBC, but essentially if it's a show you've heard of, you probably won't find it available in Canada for legal download. You have people like me, who WANT TO BUY STUFF that we can EASILY GET FOR FREE... and we have no way to do it! The stupidity of this actually makes me angry.

Re:Ugh...

[hesaigo999ca]

I know, because these same companies that say are hurting, are declaring that harry potter 6 had to go bankrupt....600 million dollars they owed and now do not, creative accounting, they use a dummy company hp6 to get all the expenses, then declare loses on the movie, which we all know made 700 million, so how does this work? paramount charges the hp6 company for everything from toilet paper to renting sets to renting movie cameras etc...and drive the prices sky high so that the company is hopelessly broke, and then files for chapter 11...all the while making their money and interest on that money.....when they say that piracy is rampant....

Seriously, if I was able to not watch another movie, I would do so to boycott hollywood...but alas, I need my fix.

Re:Ugh...

[kent_eh]

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."

Not quite.
What they saw was themselves not profiting from every single transaction and they started to panic.

Re:Ugh...

[digitalaudiorock]

I often wonder if a) they actually believe their own FUD or, b) their real motivation (and most likely the motivation of the movie and publishing industries) is to eventually create a situation where nobody ever "owns" anything, but rather rents/buys it multiple times. Either way, it's amazing how many industries are climbing over each other to follow the record industry down the DRM toilet.

Re:Ugh...

[CoderJoe]

I want the content to be released on physical media. Sure, I may then transfer the content to a more convenient form for my consumption, but I still want the original physical, (preferably) lossless copy. That way I can buy it and not be left at the mercy of a company that may not be around in 10, 20, 30, 50 years when I want to watch, listen to, or share some old piece of culture. If it is kept "in the cloud" on their servers, I can't be sure I can get to it then. The company may no longer be around in order to supply the content upon request.

Ignore for a moment the print/electronic differences between a print book and an ebook. If I were to buy a print copy of Nineteen Eighty-Four from Amazon, they cannot come into my house in the middle of the night and remove it from my collection. However, they can (and have) done the same with their ebook system.

Additionally, with Redbook audio CDs, the audio is in PCM, rather than MP3 or AAC. If another new CODEC comes down the road, I can re-encode my CDs (which I may have also ripped to a lossless CODEC such as FLAC) into that new CODEC without generational loss. DVD and Bluray aren't quite as good in that regard, but the amount of space needed for a lossless version of those would be far too large, so I forgive that. Not that this matters to the content producers. They would prefer you re-buy stuff with every format change. What they really would like is a leak-proof pipe from their source to your eyeball or eardrum, and charge you every time you watch or listen to the content.

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."

One day, sooner than we all think...

[Anonymous Coward]

One day, sooner than we all think, we will all be able to download every single piece of digitizable human culture ever created in under an hr. It will fit on an external hardrive easily purchased for 16hrs of minimum wage labour. The marginal cost of distribution is rapidly approaching zero.

What lies beneath the event horizon of a black hole? Decent people shouldn't think to much about that.

Re:One day, sooner than we all think...

[dryeo]

Yea, netflix changed things in Canada too. Very low limits introduced, 3GBs IIRC with a $2 charge per GB for going over.
With an election approaching the government overrode the new rules but I'm sure they'll revert once the election is over.

Re:One day, sooner than we all think...

[Vanderhoth]

For sure content is growing quickly.

As for culture, Every time I see an ad for Justin Bieber I wonder.

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!!!

[gman003]

Unfortunately, this isn't exactly the case. Sure, if isoHunt simply provided a searchable index of torrents, they should be able to claim ignorance of any wrongdoing, with the whole "safe harbor" argument, but there's a flaw in that: they did more. Several times when I visited, they had an "editor's pick" or something like that, which was invariably something pirated (and blatantly so), with a description that pretty much shouted "this file is illegal!". That's not just "refusing to take down pirated material", that goes into "actively distributing". You could probably get a conviction for conspiracy based on that.

Of course, if the Canadian MAFIIA is anything like the American one (word-of-mouth is that it's actually worse), I'd have to side with isoHunt simply out of spite.

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:This...

[dryeo]

I buy it from the thrift store and occasionally garage sales. The Mennonites who run the local thrift store do good work and I don't mind supporting them.

Re:This...

[Nerdfest]

I've switched to Jamendo and other such independent music sites. Completely free, and there's a lot of good music. You get the added bonus of searching for what you like yourself, rather than having what the record companies deem "popular" pushed at you all day.

Cheapskates

[Mathinker]

You missed the part in the discussion which points out that the probable reason why the labels didn't bring the suit previously was because they prefer that legislation make it much cheaper for them to enforce their copyrights. I wouldn't be surprised if the timing of this lawsuit is designed to maximize its nuisance value versus its legal expenses --- if the industry is convinced that the new bill will pass in the near future, maybe they are hoping they can cause a lot of legal expense for Isohunt in the near term, and then suddenly be able to "refile" because the the change in the legislative landscape after the passage of the bill.

A comment on the blog quoted an industry source:

I quote Danielle Parr, executive director of the Entertainment Software Association of Canada, who says exceptions to the protection of digital locks wonâ(TM)t work. "When you create a big hole in the law that people can drive through, the onus is suddenly placed right on the copyright creator to prove the infringement."

I had thought that the Canadian Supreme Court has already ruled that fair use is a right of the consumer, so how can this law be viable? Or does legislation always override previous judicial decisions in Canada?

<sigh/>When will the industry figure out that Whack-a-Mole isn't going to work?

Re:Cheapskates

[dryeo]

IIRC it was the Court of Appeals (second highest court) that ruled that sharing music was legal. The CRIA were scared to take it to the Supreme Court.
I believe in most countries the legislature can update the laws to work around judicial decisions, at least as long as it doesn't conflict with any existing bill of rights or in our case charter of rights and freedoms. Our charter of rights also has a lot of weasel wording, section 1, the reasonable limits clause (in practice the States have the same thing) and section 33, the not withstanding clause.
The notwithstanding clause allows the government (federal or provincial) to override any right or freedom for up to 5 years at a shot. Only seriously used for the Quebec Language sign law so far.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_One_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Section_Thirty-three_of_the_Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms

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.

Re:wtf?

[creativeHavoc]

Nothing passed, this is a third try. Bill C-32

Scrap the CD-R levy then.

[QJimbo]

Greedy record companies can't have it both ways.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Private_copying_levy#Canada

Characterizations

[dontmakemethink]

These people are devious, selfish, resourceful, and have no respect for the law.

The above statement is about:
A - record labels
B - people who download music illegitimately
C - people who distribute music illegitimately
D - EVERYONE EXCEPT US MUSICIANS

When the labels don't get paid, they take fewer and fewer risks on new talent, and the result is that the only music that gets promoted is over-produced over-hyped generic dogshit. Anyone catch that Superbowl halftime show? That's what happens when real talent goes unrewarded.

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.

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:Characterizations

[dryeo]

B - people who download music illegitimately

How do you download music illegitimately (in Canada). Buy a blank CD and the record companies get a cut, so they're getting paid for people doing backups, copying their legitimately copyrighted photos to a CD and so on. This caused the courts to rule that sharing music is not illegal.
 

Re:Characterizations

[Richard_at_work]

Out of interest, how many torrents end up on a cd-r or DVD-r? I haven't personally bought a spindle in 5 years, or burned a DVD in the last year.

Re:Characterizations

[janek78]

I don't know about Canada, but here (EU, Czech Republic) we pay the levy for hard drives, USB flash disks, copiers,... Except for blank paper, I believe they have it covered. So it's hard to feel quilty when your new hard drive comes "pre-paid".

Re:Characterizations

[L4t3r4lu5]

Labels have audiences. She probably wouldn't be signed up on Roadrunner Records either, even if the dude at the top said she was pretty good.

Sing for your supper like everyone else.

[joebob2000]

Want money? go play gigs. Why is it a god given right to get rich off a few songs or get money for the rest of your life for performances over a short period of time. Same with software, etc. Someone still has to work to make the food that artists living off IP eat. Sounds like a great situation to be in, but getting on a moral high horse about your god-given right to hit the jackpot and be supported in luxury by society for the rest of your life is a stretch.

One day's work for one day's pay. No need for labels, copyrights, etc. Most people work under that system (jobs) and it does not require locking up college kids for downloading something that has an average economic shelf life of a couple weeks.

Oh cry me a river

[SmallFurryCreature]

Really, go and cry me a river.

NOBODY OWNS YOU A LIVING. There is no law anywhere that states you have some inalienable right to make your living the way you want to. You can TRY in any free nation but NOWHERE is success guaranteed.

I want to make a living as a male escort, ergo all you men who are giving sex away for free or worse PAYING for it are stealing the bread out of my mouth, you rapists are even worse!

Oh, that is my problem? Well then your friend not being signed up by some massive record label for a huge budget is NOT my problem either.

Do you buy your bread from the supermarket? What about the dreams of a guy/girl who wanted to become a baker and own their own little store making fresh tasty bread every day? No, but you buy it from the supermarket don't you. THIEF!

Times change, used to be that some people got lucky (talent never had anything to do with it) and got signed up and made it big. That is nice. But there always been far more that didn't make it.

Oh and there is such a thing as independ labels or even doing it yourself. Countless bands play purely for the love it and try to recoup some of the costs by apparearing at small events and selling a handfull of self made CD's. That not good enough for your friend? Then she ain't in it for the love of music but is just a money sucking whore who didn't get signed because she didn't suck enough dick.

Really, this is like coal-miners protesting about the closure of mines or the protests about the motor car ruining the horse trade. Except that the death of the mass music industry will only affect sell outs and shills. So cry me a river because I won't be shedding a tear.

Onus

[Fnord666]

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

Wait, what? Isn't the onus already on the copyright holder to prove infringement?

I just pay for my music

[AdrianKemp]

Before I get a down mod for being one of those terrible people who buy music let me make something clear; I do not think that downloading/recording music for free is unethical. Copyright started as an agreement for distribution channels and that is what it should remain. When someone downloads a song they are bypassing that distribution channel but are in no way harming or invalidating it. Re-distributing music however, is unethical and should be punished; artists agree to a distribution channel and by redistributing their content you are harming that agreement and them.

I buy songs through itunes, it's a great experience and at some level I am supporting the artist. I also email every group I like pleading with them to break the label contract as soon as they can and release their music with all proceeds going directly to themselves. I don't like supporting labels, but I refuse to support those that are bypassing the artists' chosen distribution channel.

The great thing about recording the radio or a live stream etc. is that no one ever knows. You can't be prosecuted because there is no evidence outside of your own home/computer. The people who are getting in trouble over this are the ones that support mass-redistribution... they deserve what they get.

the tax man

[ProfBooty]

I've said this before and I will say it again, I never understand why the taxman won't step in and fix this. Seems like the feds should be able to take in a considerable amount of money.