If you use BitTorrent search isoHunt.com, you’ve probably noticed that the site is now offline. This happened yesterday, and according to their website, it says “Lawyers from our primary ISP decided to pull our plug without any advance notice, as of 14:45 PST. No doubt related to our lawsuit brought by the MPAA, but we don’t have more information at this time.” And in the mean time, they were recommending using Google by searching for “Search Terms ext:torrent.”
The Motion Picture Association of America is likely the reason for isoHunt being taken down, they filed a lawsuit against them stating the reason as copyright infringement. They are also not the only ones that the MPAA are after. It seems that if you’re in the BitTorrent business, you’ll probably need to be running and hiding for your money.
Adding a little humor to their problem, they say that no, moving servers to Sweden or Sealand isn’t going to help. You’ll probably recall the incident last year when The Pirate Bay was taken down. The ended up back up, but currently, their hope is to buy a country of their own, Sealand (a man-made British naval platform sitting in the sea off of Southern England) so that they wouldn’t have to worry about being taken down. So far, since January 15th, The Pirate Bay has raised $14,000 in their effort to purchase the rusting platform (sounds suitable for some servers, right?). Their alternative if they can’t get enough funds? Well, purchase another small island somewhere else to claim.
isoHunt has a new ISP, this time in Canada. For now, they say they’re “moving house, if the tubes run smoothly, we expect to be back in full swing tomorrow.” They also say, “BitTorrent was created for distribution of any large media file, and we stand by that ideal as a search engine and aggregator.”
News Source: Ars Technica
It was only a matter of time. I suspect that any U.S. based BitTorrent site will come under attack by the MPAA sooner rather than later.
I agree, it’s no different than the RIAA cracking down.
I would laugh if Pirate Bay or someone really did buy a country – then what would RIAA or MPAA do? I’m not for piracy – don’t get me wrong. I’d just like to see those suits helpless for a change.
It would be kinda funny. And actually, the fact that they would go to such great lengths as to buy a country says something.
I think the suits are pretty much helpless for right now. Many of these companies like the Pirate Bay and AllofMP3 survive only because their countries do not regulate against their practices. I think if you give it some time that the countries will come around and start finding these services to be illegal. The Pirate Bay could be one of the only ones left standing if they get their own country.
Made me wonder why searching for torrents is a centralized activity in the first place. What’s stopping someone from making a torrent client with the capability of searching torrent files? Other P2P softwares have always had this ability…
Just to give you guys an update on the Sealand purchase:
[torrentfreak.com]
It’s currently out of the question, but there still “shopping around” for another island.
I was talking with a friend of mine today, who used isohunt religiously to download torrents…he got turned in by users on the site to 20th Century Fox…and was sent a letter to delete all of the pirated content on his hard drive within 24 hours, or a lawsuit would follow. Not that that would scare him off, his father is the 2nd best lawyer in the state (who’s helping me sue my ISP
), and has gotten out of ordeals like this in the past. Their (and my) ISP, Charter Communications was also about to ban them from service permanently if they didn’t comply with the demands.
The same thing actually happened to me several years ago when Warner Bros sent a letter by proxy through my ISP Charter Communications threatening a subpoena that would amount to a $1 million lawsuit (no joke), if I didn’t delete 20 movies by midnight. So I burned all the movies to VCDs, cleared my hard drive updated my IP Blocker and never have had an issue since.
The MPAA, RIAA, IFPA truly can not win a lawsuit lawfully per se. All you need is an intelligent lawyer to combat them. They need reasonable suspicion just to justify invasion of your privacy by means of hacking into your computer and other such means, and the only way they can achieve such a thing is for the person to publicly self-incriminate themselves. It’s all a bunch of scare tactics, they do it because they are profiting from the ignorant and ill informed. It’s a battle they can’t win, and in many cases piracy doesn’t hurt them, and [torrentfreak.com] Furthermore the artists aren’t making money off of the albums if they are signed with a big label…and in some cases they actually end up paying out money to the label they sign with, which is completely opposite of what is ideally supposed to happen.
Here’s a [wireless-weblog.com] of how easy it is to ward off the RIAA/MPAA/IFPA in a lawsuit. This is one of many methods I have thought of, and have set aside for the day when I receive another letter by proxy from my (soon to be sued) ISP with a legally/argumentatively unsupported lawsuit/threat.
I think Torrents are centralized because they will always be available for download then, even if the download isn’t. Their are a lot of people who do not keep the files on their computer after downloading them so eventually the Torrents could be lost. It would be nice if there was a way to decentralize them so that these sites couldn’t be taken down as easy.
With all of the land out there I’m sure their bound to find something…and when they do everyone will want to host their sites there.
You’re right that there is really nothing these people can do when they come after you, but most people just admit that they were doing something wrong and take the punishment. It actually reminds me of the little girl a few years ago who got sued by the RIAA and she ended up making money off of it because she starred in the Pepsi commercial when they were giving away song downloads. It’s so ridiculous sometimes how these things work out.