IsoHunt Shut Down?

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.

Re:good idea, bad idea

[theStorminMormon]

I was referring to the RIAAs practice of suing everyone and their grandmother without regard to the evidence, literally. This is another element of the wack-a-mole strategy. I thought my reference to the RIAA by name, among other things, would have made this obvious.

-stormin

Re:good idea, bad idea

[Daemonstar]

A lot of innocent people are having their lives ruined?

I think he's referring to the lawsuits against people who have not done anything wrong but have had lawsuits brought against them.

Also...can you really consider those who download illegal torrents..."innocent"?

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.

You're damned right...

[zappepcs]

The copyright holders are losing, not because TPB or ISOHunt will always pop back up, but because they are trusting the business and revenue to a group of people who are whole heartedly working overtime to ruin their business. The **AA are subhumans (more or less) who are trying to create a supply and demand situation where the demand is greater than the supply by choking off all supplies but their own. This is typically termed manipulating the market in most circles, but they have paid the lawmakers to make it look legal.

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.

Re:May not be intended to be a solution

[Abcd1234]

but when it comes to proving your case, it's the effort that counts.

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.

Re:I don't get it.

[tlhIngan]

They get turned off in the US so they move to Canada how is that proving a point instead of moving to Sweden or some other country where it isn't sketchy. Is it that they just got a good offer from Canada or are they trying to jump ship from the states.

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?

I believe the basic reason is the creator of IsoHunt is well, Canadian, and lives in Greater Vancouver (BC). I seem to recall many newspaper articles about IsoHunt and how it's irking copyright people. Basically, I was wondering what purpose there was having a newspaper (one of the two pay dailies, but I think it might've been in both) print that, and now *everyone* knows about IsoHunt.

The articles never seemed to imply it was doing something illegal, just that it was a search engine that *could* be used to find pirated movies and stuff on other sites, but not actually hosting any illegal content. (Unless lists of file hashes and URLs are illegal?)

Their new ISP in Toronto, Canada

[ylikone]

Their new ISP is in Toronto and it's called NeutralData.com [neutraldata.com]. So will they not get a lawsuit slapped on them by the RIAA/MPAA even if they are in Canada?

Re:good idea, bad idea

[AmVidia HQ]

I call bullshit. I download all my Linux ISOs from Isohunt. They have more trackers, more peers, more seeders than any other source I've found.

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.