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9th Circuit Affirms IsoHunt Decision; No DMCA Safe Harbor
crankyspice writes "The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed, in Columbia Pictures Industries v. Fung (docket no. 10-55946), the summary judgment and injunctions against Gary Fung and his IsoHunt (and 3d2k-it) websites, finding liability for secondary copyright infringement for the sites' users' BitTorrent (and eDonkey) file sharing, under the 'inducement' theory (set forth by the Supreme Court in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. , 545 U.S. 913 (2005)). The injunctions were left largely intact, with modifications required to make it more clear to the defendants what BitTorrent (etc) related activity they're enjoined from." Bloomberg has a short article on the case, too.
Why was it, again, that anyone ever gave the legal system any say over what happens on or with the internet?
It existed for decades without so much as their awareness, and did arguably a lot better than it's doing now, with fewer problems, less stifling of rights, no big brother style monitoring, and so on.
And it is a bought and paid-for ass.
before the record and film industries go after Google and its competitors..
What does that even mean?
I am so glad I never became a lawyer like my mother wanted me to.
I said - don't look Ethel!..., but it was too late..., she'd already looked.
The 9th Circuit is a joke. It is the most overturned circuit in the country and the laughing stock of the judicial system.
Why was it, again, that anyone ever gave the legal system any say over what happens on or with the internet?
It's been a long tome since the Internet was the geek's private playground.
The geek's explanation for his every failure in law, politics and government is bribery.
As I understand it: The average citizen gets information about issues and candidates from one of the major TV news networks. A news source can refuse to cover a particular issue or a particular candidate's campaign. This means the citizen won't be made aware of it. So if TV news networks fail to cover developments in copyright law or candidates who have expressed interest in a balanced approach to copyright, they can influence the behavior of voters. Now guess what conglomerates own the major TV news sources and would have a reasonable motive and opportunity to exploit their conflict of interest: the parent companies of five of the six studios that make up the MPAA.
IsoHunt is unique in that it indexes across many sites/trackers. Does anyone knows a good alternative?
The 9th Circuit is a joke. It is the most overturned circuit in the country
Citation needed that a significantly larger percentage of the Ninth Circuit's decisions are overturned than those of other circuits. The fact is that the population of the Ninth Circuit is larger; therefore more cases will be brought. If more cases are decided, and the same percentage of them are overturned, a greater number of decisions will be overturned.
Billions of dollars go into 'lobbying' each year, that's not money required to hire the people to express the opinion, that's money funnelled into the political machine directly. With PAC funding, that's pretty much money in the pocket, they can do with PAC money whatever the candidate wants. That money is a bribe in all but name.
The problem here is, the word bribery has lost its meaning because the crime has largely been legitimized.
Geeks make big play about Citizens United, but that just *increased* the bribery by allowing companies to openly bribe politicians.
So yes, bribery it is. Here the copyright holders have a legitimate complaint, but instead they're attacking the third degree from it. Instead of going after the copyright infringement, or the torrent tracker, they're going after a search engine of the torrent trackers. Twice removed from the offense. To drive it through they're conflating the infringement the ISOHunt guy did with the search engine.
Don't be so hard on the AC! He learned his arithmetic from a Texas high school math book.
There is DHT, which is a basically distributed map from the torrent hash value into the torrent seed location set.
Why can't similar principle be used for the search by the name of content too?
Then it will be no need for the Iso Hunt or Pirate Bay at all.
This is no different that saying crowbar manufacturers liable for burglaries committed with their tools.
This will get overturned in 3 seconds at SCOTUS, because it has been ruled a million times that you cannot hold the manufacturer of a product that has a lawful purpose liable for the intentional and malicious misuse of that product.
> some people seem to think that corporations and intellectual property are codified in the constitution!
States play a big part in the legal structure of the US too. And it happens that states have decided to charter corporations.
As far as intellectual property, that is certainly codified in the Constitution.
Corporate goons and their corporate henchmen have more power and influence than the patriot citizen has.
The mind conceives, the body achieves, the spirit manifests.
Right. Most people get all their information from a single TV channel, and will never change this TV channel (perhaps their remote is broken?)
TV stations freely ignore candidates they don't like, the way FOX never mentions Obama.
I'm not sarcastic, I can't help talking this way!
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
Why was there no thought applied here? Why should we make
suckiwood wealthy? What is the moral rule that applies? Why make
a game of intersecuring knowledge with one another? Why would
this still be a world of pirates (DCMA) versus us when we could
actually have had a new world ?
I am an artist, by the way. There is no defense here,
except of Capitalist (valueless, useless) "values". Up until
now, we have prospered by keeping intelligence open
and online. THIS IS STUPID.
DCMA => downfall of America.
John Eadie [JE46] http://www.c-art.com `one of these days the dogs aren't going to eat the dog food' - Bill Joy
As far as intellectual property, that is certainly codified in the Constitution.
Citation needed.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
ha
I don't watch TV. I do read the news. My source are Slashdot & BBC. Chances are if it isn't tech related or covered by the BBC I wouldn''t see it.
Now I don't know how many different newspapers you read every day or stations you watch although in my experience they tend to all have the same shitty coverage with seemingly from the same perspective. Maybe I'm just too far left for this country. However I think the coverage is piss poor either way.
It doesn't matter, the same few people own all the mainstream channels. Some people actually go out of their way to find the truth, but most people will be spoon fed their news by these few people. In the cases their interests conflict you can infer something from the discrepancies between them, but most of the time their interests converge.
The Ninth is also the most notorious for having their appeals overturned by SCOTUS, so there's a sliver of hope.
Article I, section 8, clause 8: [The Congress shall have Power] To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
At least make it hard, seriously.
Here it's Slashdot, BBC, Deutsche Welle, Al Jazeerah, ABC, SBS, Sydney Morning Herald, Pravda, South China Post. Sometimes I watch CCTV news as well. Occasionally, I read Pravda in an effort to keep my very rusty Russian language skills from entirely disappearing (okayyyyy... maybe a bit of Soviet nostalgia there, too; so sue me, already, for having grown up in the heyday of the Cold War, and let's get on with it).
I quit bothering very much with CNN or any other US outlet ten years ago... About 5 minutes after I saw how much news *didn't* get reported on the American sites/channels. Which was about 5 minutes after my first evening TV news experience in Australia with ABC, SBS, and BBC.
Shit, last time I was *in* the US, I watched SBS or BBC on my laptop for my news fix. Tried to watch CNN with my Dad, and the cognitive dissonance actually started making my head hurt.
Fortunately, he lives on a lake in Florida; he, his dogs, his fishing boat, and I found lots better things to do most of the time than watching television. :)
Moving away from the US was the smartest damn thing I've ever done in my life--it got me away from the mental poison known as American TV.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
This will go on until the blood of one of these cunts is spilled. ..
WTF?
Is this some oddball attempt at viral marketing for Kotex?
That's basically what this ruling says. Sure it targets a specific site, but it doesn't differ from the thousands exactly like it and the even bigger number almost like it.
The core issue is that it states that by linking to resources that brings you closer to commit copyright infringement, you enable infringement and thus commit it yourself. All sites on the Internet do this - by choice or by proxy. Nothing is more than a few clicks away from any page so any click might bring you closer to something illegal and thus that link and the site it's on are enabling it.
The ruling does not distinguish between deliberate links and generated links, like the result of a search or other form of automated indexing (like what was used on Isohunt), nor the link depth involved. Unless there's a least a clear ruling on how many clicks represents a 'safe distance', any link is potentially leading to something bad and thus a part of this badness, and this means that every single link on the entire Internet is enabling and thus part of everything illegal.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
It's possible to download all music you ever need from YouTube. That's secondary infringement right there!
That, though, is why you put that in brackets. To hide it, somehow.
It isn't codified there.That's why there's a section in the law statute, not a page out of the constitution used for it.
What little is there is about the reasons why copyright must be there. And it isn't securing for limited times, not securing it to authors and inventors and not promoting the progress of science and the useful arts.
Therefore, according to that section of the constitution, the copyrights are not constitutional. A SPEECH DELIVERED IN THE HOUSE OF COMMONS ON THE 5TH OF FEBRUARY 1841
by Thomas Babington Macaulay
On the twenty-ninth of January 1841, Mr Serjeant Talfourd obtained leave to bring in a bill to amend the law of copyright. The object of this bill was to extend the term of copyright in a book to sixty years, reckoned from the death of the writer.
On the fifth of February Mr Serjeant Talfourd moved that the bill should be read a second time. In reply to him the following Speech was made. The bill was rejected by 45 votes to 38.
Though, Sir, it is in some sense agreeable to approach a subject with which political animosities have nothing to do, I offer myself to your notice with some reluctance. It is painful to me to take a course which may possibly be misunderstood or misrepresented as unfriendly to the interests of literature and literary men. It is painful to me, I will add, to oppose my honourable and learned friend on a question which he has taken up from the purest motives, and which he regards with a parental interest. These feelings have hitherto kept me silent when the law of copyright has been under discussion. But as I am, on full consideration, satisfied that the measure before us will, if adopted, inflict grievous injury on the public, without conferring any compensating advantage on men of letters, I think it my duty to avow that opinion and to defend it.
The first thing to be done, Sir, is to settle on what principles the question is to be argued. Are we free to legislate for the public good, or are we not? Is this a question of expediency, or is it a question of right? Many of those who have written and petitioned against the existing state of things treat the question as one of right. The law of nature, according to them, gives to every man a sacred and indefeasible property in his own ideas, in the fruits of his own reason and imagination. The legislature has indeed the power to take away this property, just as it has the power to pass an act of attainder for cutting off an innocent man's head without a trial. But, as such an act of attainder would be legal murder, so would an act invading the right of an author to his copy be, according to these gentlemen, legal robbery.
Now, Sir, if this be so, let justice be done, cost what it may. I am not prepared, like my honourable and learned friend, to agree to a compromise between right and expediency, and to commit an injustice for the public convenience. But I must say, that his theory soars far beyond the reach of my faculties. It is not necessary to go, on the present occasion, into a metaphysical inquiry about the origin of the right of property; and certainly nothing but the strongest necessity would lead me to discuss a subject so likely to be distasteful to the House.
I agree, I own, with Paley in thinking that property is the creature of the law, and that the law which creates property can be defended only on this ground, that it is a law beneficial to mankind. But it is unnecessary to debate that point. For, even if I believed in a natural right of property, independent of utility and anterior to legislation, I should still deny that this right could survive the original proprietor. Few, I apprehend, even of those who have studied in the most mystical and sentimental schools of moral philosophy, will be disposed to maintain that there is a natural law of succession older and of higher authority than any human code.
If there be, it is quite certain that we have abuses to reform much more serio
"which the judge ruled invalid as isoHunt was doing "editorial content" and pointing out specific torrents that were to be of interest"
Uh, Google have a sponsored link. You can click on "I'm feeling lucky". Both are pointing out specific locations that were to be of interest. Indeed, without Google or any search engine pointing out locations that are of specific interest, they are no more than an unorganised dictionary of URLs.
Most people get all their information from a single TV channel, and will never change this TV channel
You'd be surprised. In my extended family survey sample, at least one householder sticks to MSNBC because she likes being told what she wants to hear. I've made her fully aware that she treats the issues on which the Democrats and Republicans as a sports rivalry where she roots for the Democrats, and she told me she enjoys it. Besides, even if they do change channels, it's from one channel that doesn't adequately cover developments in copyright law to another channel that doesn't adequately cover developments in copyright law.
TV stations freely ignore candidates they don't like, the way FOX never mentions Obama.
I was thinking more along the lines of Ron Paul's 2008 campaign.
They are working on getting that too.. By not extending the same protections we have had on land lines to internet communications they are setting up to be able to do just this down the road.
Such a vague definition means that you will lose if the government does not like you, but will win if they do. Of course it was designed to be that way.
That doesn't codify intellectual property. It merely gives the US Federal Government authorization to create such a thing. The justification for creating such a thing is given as the public good. It is not framed as some sort of new form of property. It is not framed as a virtual land grab.
Copyright is OPTIONAL.
Copyright is not a right.
"Congress shall have the power" versus "the right shall not be infringed".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
When the most liberal court in US is against the people who can save us now ?
JAM
Sort of related...
I rarely use torrents and file sharing in general. But as it relates to companies/groups using it to "spy" on people trying to do illegal things w/ the content (piracy, etc), why don't the sharing sites add terms to the usage of the site/software/etc that it cannot be used for such purposes. Basically, the site and/or software can only be used for actually sharing, not for gleaning information about what people are doing, or what they have, etc.
Article I, Section 8, Clause 8
It certainly does codify it as it places some parameters around what it should look like.
And yes Copyright is a right. It says so in the Constitution.
Is it just me or is the Internet turning to shite?
http://articles.latimes.com/2009/jun/29/local/me-9th-scotus29
imho open indexers should be exempt from the dmca laws, it's just a robot listing of what's out there.
The whole reason for OCILLA was to make indexers exempt from copyright law provided that they respond promptly to notices of claimed infringement.
type "youtube full movies" into google search.
The first result from Google youtube full movies resulted in a playlist, and the first movie I tried (not the first on the playlist) had a message that it had been blocked by Content ID.
THE ENTIRE CHAIN INCLUDES ONLY GOOGLE SERVICES AND IT'S GOOGLE DOING THE HOSTING OF THE WHOLE ACTION CHAIN!
YouTube is known both for promptly responding to OCILLA notices and for proactively matching videos submitted by users to samples submitted by copyright owners. In fact, the complaint against YouTube seen more commonly on Slashdot is that YouTube is often too eager to remove material believed to have been used without permission, even if it is in fact used with permission (such as the Hugo Awards webcast) or used under a statutory limitation on exclusive rights.
youtube advertises as "Share your videos"
I take "Share your videos" to mean "Share videos that you created or whose copyright you otherwise own", not merely "share videos a copy of which you own". If an MPAA member seeks statutory judgment against YouTube on the basis of "Share your videos", the burden will be on the MPAA to convince a judge otherwise. Nor does YouTube advertise with the names of specific movies that aren't on Google Play, to the best of my knowledge.
So, if I don't advertise that I'm dealing crack near school, I should be safe?
I fail to see how your analogy applies. There's a difference between failing to qualify under a safe harbor statute and no safe harbor statute existing in the first place. These providers claim safe harbor under the OCILLA statute for operating an automated search system. The movie studios convinced the Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit that the safe harbor does not apply to any provider that advertises using the titles of specific works whose copyright owners have not allowed them to be made available through the service. If there were an analogous safe harbor statute for dealing prescription drugs without a valid license, that'd be news to me.
I'll see your biased newspaper article reporting on one term, and raise you a well-sourced scholarly article by a prominent Constitutional scholar.
Your move, junior.
Why not ban every copyrighted work name from the internet itself? That way not only can you not find anything to download that is illegal, you also wouldn't be able to find anything for sale or profit that was legal to buy. That's the ultimate solution. And then you could only buy a movie from WalMart after searching disc by disc through the 'for sale movie bin' for what you wanted.
Typical slashdotters arguing about anarchy. The issue is legal remedies if and when they are necessary. Right now, damn few slashdotters can afford to pursue a legal case on ay form of harm from the internet, let alone defend against one. It's become a stomping ground for government and big data lawyers with size 11 feet.
What we need is an internet small claims court, not DMCA.
And yes Copyright is a right. It says so in the Constitution.
Not in the US Constitution. It's an option for Congress to take away rights.