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IsoHunt Shut Down?
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed Jan 17, 2007 11:02 AM
from the copyright-wack-a-mole dept.
from the copyright-wack-a-mole dept.
psic writes "One of the most popular torrent search sites, IsoHunt, was taken down on tuesday. The owners of the site say that the move came from their ISP without prior notice, though it is probably linked with the MPAA's lawsuit against various torrent search sites earlier this year. They plan on moving ISPs from the US to Canada, and say that moving the servers so someplace like Sweden or Sealand is not an option, as they put it: "BitTorrent was created for legitimate distribution of large media files, and we stand by that philosophy as a search engine and aggregator."" This is a story we've heard before with other sites, only serving to further demonstrate that playing wack a mole with torrent aggregators isn't the solution to anything.
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the obligatory... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:the obligatory... (Score:5, Funny)
TMYTYGTTMSSWSTYF
saves screen space
Parent
Re:the obligatory... (Score:5, Insightful)
No, its just the nature of politics in the states. There are plenty of countries in Europe with much fairer political systems which do a much better job of representing the people who elect them.
If you just accept that your political system is never going to represent your opinions it never will.
If you try your damnedest to change it you MIGHT be successful.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's kind of the nature of law.
ISOHunt et al are essentially moonshiners. There's no will in the US to change the law to make it legal to trade someone else's work without their permission. (If you think I'm wrong, go ahead and start a Constitutional Amendment. It worked for Prohibition.)
What's interesting is that RIAA/MPAA are "getting it", and are starting to focus on promoting and working with major players. It's only a matter of time until the hardship of fin
Re:the obligatory... (Score:4, Insightful)
Ah, spoken like a true 8 year-old.
How about next time you be original and quote something like Ren and Stimpy?
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Ah, spoken like a true 8 year-old.
How about next time you be original and quote something like Ren and Stimpy?
Link is down (Score:5, Funny)
good idea, bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
I wholeheartedly agree that, from the perspective of the **AA, playing wack-a-mole isn't a good solution. But as an observer it's pretty funny.
More seriously, I think it is providing a long term solution, just not the one the **AA want. As these stories grow they continue to be seen as the greedy bullies they truly are. The main purpose of the RIAA and MPAA these days is to do the dirty work for the actual labels/studios and absorb the backlash. People get mad at the RIAA, not Sony. Or so the strategy goes. As anti-RIAA and anti-MPAA sentiment grows in severity and spreads into the mainstream, there will start to be bleedthrough to the actual labels and studios.
So basically the wack-a-mole strategy is the best education we could hope for that IP laws are a disgrace, that greed is the real motivator of DRM, and that DRM does nothing but create a nuisance for the consumer without effectively harming pirates. I want more and more of your average Joes to hear about stuff like this and start asking "What is with these guys anyway?" The answers will lead to some sensible IP reform.
It's a long-term goal, and I realize that in the meantime a lot of innocent people are having their lives ruined, but I think that tactics like this go a long way towards the final solution for DRM.
-stormin
Re:good idea, bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
Parent
Re:good idea, bad idea (Score:4, Funny)
Parent
Re:good idea, bad idea (Score:5, Interesting)
"The point is IsoHunt is purely a medium which people could search out torrents. The purpose was to make a library of legit legal torrents that people have created."
The first clue that the above is bullshit is the site's title. "legit, legal" torrents are seldom distributed as ISOs. If you're thinking that it refers to Linux ISOs, think again -- there's already a site [legaltorrents.com] specializing in "legit, legal" torrents. Notice that there are few if any ISOs to be had there, and no Linux distros.
Listen, I understand why the owners of ISOHunt think they need to keep chanting the "legitimate" line; it's to build a case that they didn't have intent [wikipedia.org]. But we don't need to be their stooges. We know exactly why ISOHunt was there. Let's not kid ourselves.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Thank you.
isoHunt indexes any and all torrents, adds any metadata, caches them, and aggregates trackers for each torrent so you get more speed and availability than any single source. To the GP, you can call whatever you like with my intent but at least get this fact straight.
Re:good idea, bad idea (Score:5, Informative)
-stormin
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I think he's referring to the lawsuits against people who have not done anything wrong but have had lawsuits brought against them.
You assume that people have no legal right to the files they download using links on the site. I have downloaded several games, CD's and even some books that I do own, but they have either become unreadable, stolen or lost over the years.
Re:Same Task, Different Tools (Score:4, Insightful)
Torrents generally encompass people-shifting, which isn't quite legal...
Parent
Re:Same Task, Different Tools (Score:4, Insightful)
I can record The Office and watch it later at my home, if I want to spend the time to program my VCR. But let's say I'm busy or technophobic: I can pay someone to come to my house, set up a VCR, and program it to record The Office, right? Nothing wrong with that.
Now take it one step further. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office using his VCR, and bring the tape over for me to watch? It saves him the hassle of coming over to my house just to push a few buttons on my VCR, and the end result is the same: I watch the show later, on tape, instead of live.
Now, one final step. Tapes are a dying technology. Why shouldn't I be able to pay someone to record The Office at home, encode it as an AVI file, and send me the file over the internet? The effect is exactly the same as bringing over a tape, which in turn is the same as recording it myself - I'm just delegating the work to someone else who's better at it, or at least more willing to do it. The fact that I'm paying is irrelevant; he might just as well decide to do it for free, and in fact that's what happens every day on the internet.
We can extend the same logic to music that's broadcast over the radio: I can record the song myself and listen to it again, so therefore I should be allowed to have someone else record it and send me a copy. It's nothing that I couldn't do myself, and there's no sensible reason to force me to do it myself when someone else is willing to do the work for me.
Parent
are they crazy? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:are they crazy? (Score:5, Funny)
Parent
Isohunt (Score:3, Interesting)
I hope they go back up soon. I liked them.
Re:Isohunt (Score:4, Funny)
shutting down....
yah, I should use preview more often.
Parent
I don't get it. (Score:3, Interesting)
Wouldn't a bigger statment be to stay in the states cause that seems ot me what they are trying to do.
It just seems somewhat contradictory to move from the States to Canada and then say we won't move to Sweeden because its too easy?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
I believe the basic reason
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Try Q-Tips and rubbing alcohol. That'll fix up your stiiiiiicking keeeeeys. HTH
What they DIDN'T say... (Score:3, Insightful)
"BitTorrent was created for legitimate distribution of large media files, and we stand by that philosophy as a search engine and aggregator."
"...and at the same time, we know that 99% of what our customers are looking for is pirated, and we've made handsome advertising revenue. We'd like to keep making money off of the huge demand for piracy -- it's not like copyright owners have a monopoly on the concept of 'greed', you know -- so we're going to keep doing it, and keep throwing around that 'legitimate distribution' phrase, just because we enjoy the irony."
At least TPB is a little more honest and straightforward in their goals. "legitimate distribution." Right, that's exactly what the typical isohunt customer is after, and that's exactly why they were purportedly sued by copyright holders. All that "legitimate distribution."
Is anyone suprised? (Score:3, Interesting)
"king kong torrent"
try it, and check out the top links (the top two are from isohunt)
That was just the first hollywood movie that popped into my head.
It may well be that isohunt carried a lot of perfectly legal torrents, but any torrent site that carries a huge amount of copyrighted stuff is going to be attacked by the people owning the copyright. If you really want to support legal p2p, you need to make damn sure your site is absolutely rigorous when it comes to filtering out illegal content.
In an ideal world, the anti-DRM, pro p2p crowd would be the very people who were actively moderating sites like these and keeping them clean of illegal content. As it is, nobody is going to take seriously any claims about such sites being mostly for legal use.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
1) a communist
2) a leecher
3) an idiot.
Choose.
Or explain why you have the RIGHT to take my hard work for free? Then explain my incentive to do any further work if that's true? note that this generalises to everyone on planet ea
The fruit of your labour... (Score:4, Insightful)
My problem is that I find it socially irresponsible to fund media cartels who manipulate the legal systems of various countries in an effort to artificially inflate prices and maintain a monopoly over the distribution channel.
Is that more irresponsible than pirating content? I don't know; I honestly struggle with that question. I do not believe that "information wants to be free" means that people are entitled to take and enjoy the creative works of others without paying. Doing creative work is partly an act of investment, and like any other, one of the rewards can be passive income after the work is created. Some seem to believe that people should be denied rewards on that investment if their trade happens to be creative works. I don't agree, and I don't think that view represents the majority, either.
But along the same lines, I don't believe those who control the market for content creators' products (payola, etc.) are entitled to misrepresent the revenue stream on their balance sheet & rip those artists off, either. I don't believe corporate entities are entitled to retroactively rescind the public domain status of works that have passed into that domain. I don't believe that media corporations are entitled to force internet and satellite broadcasters into using expensive, proprietary streaming formats by legislatively mandating "approved" DRM frameworks. And I don't believe that distributors or creators are entitled to multiple payments for each device I wish to use my purchased content on. Except for a few bright spots, what we've got right now is a crap system, IMO.
Ultimately, I hope a system evolves that enables me to be a good customer of the artists I like and feel good about it. You going independent is a seedling of such a system; I hope something resembling an aggregator of your distribution system becomes the norm instead of the alternative in the near future.
Parent
How funny... (Score:3, Insightful)
Please, someone bitch-slap them off the planet, they really annoy me... perhaps to the same planet the buggy-whip makers are on...
Hydra (Score:4, Insightful)
Their new ISP in Toronto, Canada (Score:4, Informative)
Bow to the upstream, for he is your master. (Score:5, Insightful)
With the end of network neutrality, it could easily happen.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Re:a Rose by any other name is still full of crap (Score:5, Interesting)
torrents are just the hurricane katrina of the internet.
Cripes, I *WISH* torrents had that sort of speed. :-\
BTW, I fully admit to being a looter. I know the law. I just don't give a shit. In a world where our government is selling us out to another country, where illegal aliens are given more rights than citizens, where some soccer dude can get handed a quarter of a -*BILLION*- dollars for playing a game, why should I be a nice little nobody who follows all the rules? Fuck all that. It's every man for himself from this point on.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:a Rose by any other name is still full of crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Copyright is an arbitrary ARTIFICIAL law -- whose time has come and past. Why is illegal? Because the government says so; and who creates the government? The people, and the people clearely are showing that it's an archaic hold-over when information was a scarce commodity.
Sharing is caring. That's the best kind of (free) advertising you can get!
Cheers
Parent
Re:a Rose by any other name is still full of crap (Score:5, Insightful)
Clearly you have never created anything you hold valuable.
I'm going to have to stand up and give my unpopular opinion here. Copyright does have its place. People SHOULD have the right to retain ownership of things they worked hard to create. They SHOULD be allowed to choose what happens to what they have created. If that means letting a limited number of people seeing it, if that means only allowing it to be seen in certain galleries or theaters or sold in certain stores, if that means charging what they feel is a fair price for each reproduction of that work, if that means not allowing other people to distribute their work freely then they have the right to that - for a finite, and fair, amount of time. I create stuff. I write stories. One day, I hope to publish and make money from what I write, which is why not everything I write is freely available online. I don't want people to randomly copy and paste my stories elsewhere without asking me. I'm lenient, but I draw the line at people who profit themselves from it, or don't give me due credit. Is that so bad? Don't I have the right to draw that line?
The argument is this: the movie studios and recording companies believe that they are losing staggering amounts of money from piracy. They believe - or have convinced themselves - that EVERY downloaded song or movie is a lost physical sale and therefore they SUE indiscriminately, for appallingly disproportionate sums and prison terms (decades in some cases), to make it so that the general public FEARS piracy.
But the fact of the matter is: when you copy me, I may lose sales - or, I may not. But I also gain a wider audience for my work. And through that wider audience I may gain sales - more than I originally lost (whatever that number is). If I am an artist and I created solely so that people could see my work, then I lose NOTHING. If I am a businessman and created solely for profit, I MAY lose something, or I may gain something.
The pro-piracy argument here is surely not that "all information should be free, everything you ever created should be available to everybody for no cost and they shouldn't have to pay you". That's insane. The argument is that choice should be with the creator - something the internet has facilitated, to the **AA's chagrin.
I'm beginning to ramble so I'll stop here.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The people made J.K. Rowling richer than the Queen of England. The people paid damn near a half-billion dollars for tickets to see Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest [imdb.com]
The people are buying the DVD in similiar numbers.
The Geek co
You're damned right... (Score:5, Informative)
The only people who will continue to lose out in big ways are the content creators who sell their copyrights to big business like the **AAs of the world. Right now, we are seeing the beginning of content creators starting to distribute their products without the help of the **AAs of the world, and its working. The more that happens, and the more that we, the people with a clue, name the companies responsible for bad laws, jacked up prices, market manipulation... the more chance there is of John Q Public understanding what is happening and voting appropriately.
So, who is responsible? Sony? No, there are way more than a few. Here is the RIAAs board of directors:
Polly Anthony Geffen Records
Mitch Bainwol RIAA
Glen Barros Concord Records
Steve Bartels Island Records
Victoria Bassetti EMI Recorded Music
Jose Behar Universal Music Group
Tim Bowen SONY BMG
Bob Cavallo Buena Vista Music
Mike Curb Curb Records
Joe Galante SONY BMG
Ivan Gavin EMI Recorded Music
Charles Goldstuck RCA Music Group
Zach Horowitz Universal Music Group
Dave Johnson Warner Music Group
Craig Kallman The Atlantic Group
Lawrence Kenswil Universal Music Group
Michael Koch Koch Entertainment
Mel Lewinter Universal Music Group
Kevin Liles Warner Music Group
Alan Meltzer Wind-up Records
Deirdre McDonald SONY BMG
David Munns EMI Recorded Music
Jason Flom Virgin Records America
Tom Silverman Tommy Boy Records
Andy Slater Capitol Records
Rob Stringer SONY BMG
Tom Whalley Warner Bros. Records
http://www.riaa.com/about/leadership/board.asp [riaa.com] Board of directors
If you want to know if someone's music is safe from **AA, try http://www.riaaradar.com/ [riaaradar.com]
I am certain that there are plenty of other resource on the Internet as well. So, lets all join together and try to make sure that content creators understand what the **AAs are doing to their business... namely killing it and any chance of real revenue.
Parent
Re:You're damned right... (Score:5, Insightful)
Oh dear. you REALLY think that statement is true?
firstly, they are not 'subhuman'. secondly, there is nothing preventing you going home right now, writing some music or making an amateur movie, and releasing it free on the web. The fact that you don't bother, but would rather make illegal copies of other peoples work instead, speaks volumes about the issue. They are not restricting the supply of entertainment. not even vaguely.
If you really gave a damn about the issue, you would avoid *evil RIAA* content entirely and stick to free content, or purchase your content directly from the content creators. Either way, downloading hollywood movies from isohunt makes their point, not yours.
Parent
Re: (Score:3)
If those kind of people had any balls at all, they would just stop leeching the works of others, and instead enjoy a few nice evenings reading books from the Gutenberg project while listening to C64 mods.
Re:May not be intended to be a solution (Score:4, Informative)
No, it's not. Copyright is not like trademarks. They don't run out if you don't enforce them. And the only evidence you need to convinct someone is proof they infringed. Past enforcement efforts have no bearing.
So all these guys are doing is harrassing people and making themselves look worse. Is there a better solution? I don't know. But it's pretty clear that the shotgun lawsuit approach simply doesn't work.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:May not be intended to be a solution (Score:4, Interesting)
You can't sit on your rights for years and then suddenly ask a court to enforce them.
Parent
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
And it appears estoppel only applies if an infringer was given the expectation that their acts are condoned. Clearly, that's not the case (ie, massive advertising campaigns, etc), so I don't see how that would apply.
'course, this is all speculation from a lightly
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Since these are equitable doctrines it is pretty much BS - judges have a LOT of discretion.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
True they don't "run out" but there are equitable defenses that can apply. Laches and Estoppel apply to both copyrights and trademarks.
If the studios allowed IsoHunt to grow for years, they might someday sue for an injunction only to be denied because the defense of Laches or Estoppel applied. This would mean that Ishunt would be allowed to continue operating. They might get a monetary damages award, but they wou
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
They created the site specifically to allow people to download illegal content. And, with the ads, they profited from it.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It's hard to claim that they didn't know they were providing torrents for illegal material if they categorised it for users.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't you realize that BitTorrent is designed as a zero-sum game? If some people have ratios over 1:1, other people must have ratios under it because the average of the whole community has to be exactly 1:1.