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IsoHunt To Court: Google Is the Bigger Problem
Krystalo writes "isoHunt is still fighting its legal battle with the MPAA. In the latest episode, the torrent website filed a reply brief to the US Court of Appeals in which it suggests that Google, and not IsoHunt, is the largest BitTorrent search engine on the Internet."
Everyone here thinks they have Asperger's when it's probably well below 5%. Fortunately not everyone here is socially awkward and trying to make excuses for it.
Let's see now what the MPAA intends to do with this information.
Real lawyers, and lots of them.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Another new account and troll post by the poster known as devxo, balls of steel, Billy the Boy, and divxio.
Google isn't solely made and used for distributing copyrighted content illegally. IsoHunt, as well as The Pirate Bay, is.
The Mob isn't exclusively used for selling counterfeit goods, so I guess they're not guilty of it?
Claiming Google isn't doing anything illegal but isoHunt is because it's all they do is crap. It's just that isoHunt doesn't have the deep pockets of a Google, Bing or Yahoo. If the MPAA thought they could win they'd be suing the big search engines too.
In any event, I don't think "But he's doing it too!" has ever been considered a valid legal defense.
(1) They shouldn't have modded you down to (0). Everyone, even idiots, are entitled to express an opinion.
>>>Google isn't solely made and used for distributing copyrighted content illegally. IsoHunt, as well as The Pirate Bay, is.
(2) Clearly you've never used isohunt. Isohunt doesn't distribute material. Nor *.tor files. It doesn't even provide a tracker! It's simply google with the "filetype torrent" tag.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Back in high school, the cops did a drug sting on campus. They busted the drug dealers AND the people that told them how to find the drug dealers. being part of the problem means you are part of the problem.
Behold, this dreamer cometh. Come now, and let us slay him... and we shall see what will become of his dreams.
>>>We need copyright so we can have successful companies like and products like Canonical and Microsoft
"There is not, in nature, a right to protect your ideas from copying..... just as you may light your taper by my fire, without diminishing my heat, so may you copy my ideas without diminishing my use of my invention." - Thomas Jefferson, 1780s
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Is everything related to the internet suddenly lumped in with the Cloud now?
>>>some engines were created for torrents
Arresting me because my search engine scours & provides links to piratebay.org, torrents.com, et cetera..... makes as little sense as arresting me because I possess photos of murder victims.
I didn't commit the crime. THEY committed the crime. I'm not liable for the acts of others.
Next I suppose you'll arrest google for providing links to child porn (nudist websites).
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
It should be. Equal protection under the law and all that. Selective enforcement of laws is a major vector for corruption.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
>>>IsoHunt willy facilitates copyright infringement a
WRONG. Isohunt doesn't distribute torrents. /b> Why can't people pull their braisn out of their anuses, and WAKE UP? Isohunt.com is not a tracker. It used to be several years ago, but not anymore. Now they are identical to google - just providing links.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Which, is pretty reaching considering in some places it's pretty hard not to know who is dealing, and knowing to stay away from them can be a valuable skill. (...) And, they wonder why people aren't always keen to cooperate with police.
Well being a sting people didn't know they were talking to cops. The second part is the difference between knowing and sending them business, I guess it depends on how they asked. It's one to thing to comment on it in conversation, but if you're asked "Dude, do you know how to get some pot around here?" and you say "Look for that red-haired guy who hangs out down by the C building, he always has good stuff." you've done more than comment on what looks like a crack house.
Live today, because you never know what tomorrow brings
But if you can show that setting a precedent of "indexing being infringement" the courts may realize they are about to outlaw search engines in general. Not only does this make the judge think twice, but shines a bit of a light on Google prodding them to possible speak up on your behalf before it becomes THEIR problem as well.
It's actually a neat tactic once you think it through.
CONTEXT KingMotley. "people are posting torrents to isohunt" is what the original poster claimed. Except that's wrong. You CAN'T post torrents to isohunt.
Jeez.
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
Sounds like the MPAA is suing IsoHunt not Google. What Google is doing doesn't matter as far as this case is concerned; they aren't a party to the case. Maybe the MPAA will go after Google next (not likely).
This is a typical infringer strategy: tell the court that some one else is doing it and more of it. Hasn't mattered in the past and will not matter in this case. The MPAA gets to choose who it wants to sue and when.
This is the Google homepage:
http://www.google.com/
It has no mention of any particular search terms at all, let alone intent.
This is the IsoHunt homepage:
http://isohunt.com/
It mentions the last 10 searches - which aren't exactly searches for Linux distributions - and what's that in the top right? Oh! How lovely, I can click through to the latest Video, TV, Game, etc. releases. What's more - I can add a release!
Even if I search for "Toy Story 3", these are Google's first page results (I'm logged out, so no personalized search):
Now let's try that at IsoHunt.
"But, AC," you say, "if you add filetype:torrent in the Google search, then you'll also get a bunch of these types of results".
Well no shit - that's partially the point though, isn't it? With Google, I have to explicitly tell the search engine that I'm looking for something a little more specific, generally associated with copies/rips/cams of whatever I'm looking for. With IsoHunt, I don't have to.
It may seem like an insignificant difference, but to the courts in various jurisdictions, all of these 'insignificant' differences add up to intent.
Anybody trying to argue that there's no difference between sites like IsoHunt and Google - either philosophical or technical - needs to be hit over the head by a clue-by-four and some sense of reality.
But here's to hoping that the judge finds they have a strong case and either the industry has to back off from these sites and we can all do the Information wants to Free-as-in-beer dance, or the industry will just have to poke at Google and get a deal from them (already happened for YouTube anyway) and then eye these sites again for further lawsuits demanding either a deal or shutdown.
>>>Jefferson actually supported IP laws
Considering this long and lengthy argument from 1786, I don't know how can you reach that braiddead conclusion. Note the final bolded sentence.
"Stable ownership is the gift of social law, and is given late in the progress of society. It would be curious then, if an idea, the fugitive fermentation of an individual brain, could, of natural right, be claimed in exclusive and stable property. 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 nature, be a subject of property."
My AC stalker: " I personally agree with your posts most of the time, but that won't keep me from modding you troll"
"Google isn't solely made and used for distributing copyrighted content illegally. IsoHunt, as well as The Pirate Bay, is. Us geeks have to learn that such things matter in court."
So a otherwise gainfully employed part time drug dealer is is not doing anything illegal?
Intent, purpose, gain or even knowledge of the law are of little interest to the court's except at sentencing, which only occurs after the actual guilty/innocent verdict
Cops can arrest you for pretty much anything what, what count's is what happen's in court and would be very interested to see if a single person who told them were to find drug's was convicted if they did not stupidly plead out. Somehow i doubt it
I remember something similar happening at a party at uni. There were a couple of guys in their mid 30's drinking soft drinks at a student party filled with 20 year olds. They kept going around asking if anyone could sort them out any drugs, or if they knew the name of anyone who could - but with a kind of zeal that your average person simply wouldn't have. They stuck out like a sore thumb, so everyone had twigged they were police well before the inevitable raid happened (by which time, anyone with anything, had already gone home). In the end, all they found was the rest of the party racking up lines of sugar on the kitchen table ;)
I couldn't agree more. The increasing fad among geeks to self diagnose themselves as mildly autistic ever since some report came out a few years ago has really tended to turn my stomach. What the fuck is wrong with you that you go around wanting to have something be wrong with you? Or is it just a desperate clinging on to an explanation for a few awkward personality traits that can be blamed on something beyond your control?
Ten and fifteen years ago, everyone went around saying they had ADD and ADHD. Now they go around saying they have Aspergers. You don't have aspergers, you fucking drama queens.
The point is Google provides links to torrents as well. And on a magnitude greater than isohunt. So why isn't Google in trouble? That is, I believe, the point. 2 companies both doing the same thing, yet only one has trouble because of it.
"But this one goes to 11!"
Compare the ratio of links to pirated material on Google to that on IsoHunt. IsoHunt loses.
Compare the response of Google to a takedown request to that of IsoHunt. IsoHunt loses.
Google makes at least a minimal attempt at not being a part of the distribution chain, IsoHunt on the other hand makes no attempt. IsoHunt loses.
You can argue that IsoHunt isn't doing anything wrong all you want, and you'll be a part of the small minority of idiots who think they'll win this battle. Good luck with that.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
Actually isohunt is solely made to search other websites for torrent files. Torrent files are not illegal, and they are not copyrighted. The content that a torrent file points your bit torrent client to, may be illegal, or it may be legal.
The increasing fad among geeks to self diagnose themselves as mildly autistic ever since some report came out a few years ago has really tended to turn my stomach. What the fuck is wrong with you that you go around wanting to have something be wrong with you?
Most likely it's mild autism.
No, the Sony Betamax decision established that mere percentages of illegal use are not relevant, but the Grokster decision established that how you promote your technology is. With those precedents, the case is likely to come down to the question of whether IsoHunt ever actively promoted the illegal uses of their system—something Google has never been accused of.
"Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Men change.
Jefferson's position on the granting of patents changed through the years. In his article "Godfather of American Invention," Silvio Bedini notes that in 1787 Jefferson's opposition to monopoly in any form led him to oppose patents. But by 1789, Jefferson's firm opposition had weakened. Writing to James Madison, Jefferson said he approved the Bill of Rights as far as it went, but would like to see the addition of an article specifying that "Monopolies may be allowed to person for their own productions in literature, and their own inventions in the arts, for a term not exceeding --- years, but for no longer term and for no other purpose."
In 1789, while Jefferson was still in Paris...the first patent act was enacted into law April 10, 1790. Under the new law, the Secretaries of War and State and the Attorney General constituted a three-man review board, with the Secretary of State (Jefferson), playing the leading role. Two months after the law was passed, Jefferson remarked it had "given a spring to invention beyond his conception."
Jefferson continued to perform his patent office duties until the patent act of February 21, 1793...
[T]he new law made the granting of patents almost entirely an automatic matter; the three-man review board was replaced by an administrative structure. In 1802, Secretary of State James Madison created a separate patent office for handling all claims.
In 1836, the patent law was completely rewritten, effecting a compromise of sorts between the strictness of Jefferson's tenure and the free-wheeling acceptance of all patent claims during the intervening years. The 1836 law is still in effect today.
Guiding Jefferson while patents came to him for review was the belief that patents should be given to particular machines, not to all possible applications or uses of them; that mere change in material or form gave no claim; and that exclusive rights of an invention must always be considered in terms of its social benefit.
Quoting Jefferson on invention and intellectual property rights is not without irony.
Jefferson was notoriously spendthrift. Living his life one jump ahead of the sheriff, as a proper Southern gentleman should.
Jefferson's architecture and invention were - with the exception of an early moldboard plow - almost exclusively - meant for use by men of his own race and class.
This was not man who was going to invent bifocals, a lightening rod or a Franklin stove. This was not a man who was going to ignite an industrial revolution.
Jefferson's workforce was slave labor.
He was obliged neither to publicly acknowledge a slave's contributions or to pay for them - and any promises of emancipation he may have made would prove empty. He was bankrupt.
He was obliged to educate his workforce - and that in Virginia would become dangerous even before his body was cold.
>>>Jefferson actually supported IP laws
Considering this long and lengthy argument from 1786, I don't know how can you reach that braiddead conclusion. Note the final bolded sentence.
Inventions then cannot, in nature, be a subject of property."
Jefferson's position seems pretty clear to me. He does not believe that the rights to ideas and inventions are property rights. Thus, there are not fundamental rights in the same way that property rights are (in the Lockian philosophy which underpins the US constitution). However, he does recognize the economic importance of protecting the creator's interests in "productions in literature, and [...] inventions in the arts" for a limited time through legislation.
This is in contrast to how many view "intellectual property" today. These people see the the ability to control the use and dissemination of ideas and expressions as a fundamental right which the law protects, rather than an artificial right which the law creates.
Be careful. People in masks cannot be trusted.