BitTorrent search site IsoHunt will shut down, pay MPAA $110 million

[tangent4ronpaul]

This sucks! - IsoHunt is the bestest torrent search site evvvvaa! :(

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2013/10/bittorrent-site-isohunt-will-shut-down-pay-mpaa-110-million/

isoHunt, a search engine for BitTorrent files founded more than a decade ago, has agreed today to shut down all its operations worldwide. The company, founded by Canadian Gary Fung, will also pay the movie studios that sued it $110 million.

Fung gave up his long legal fight just weeks from having to defend his site in federal court; a jury trial was scheduled to start on November 5 in a Los Angeles federal court. Earlier court rulings had already determined that Fung was liable for "inducing" copyright infringement, so the court trial would have largely been about damage control. The MPAA had stated studio lawyers would have sought as much as $600 million had the case gone to trial.

On the US version of isoHunt, Fung had already agreed to filter out MPAA content when it showed up.

isoHunt argued that it was solely a neutral search engine and had never directly copied the illegal content. But that defense failed isoHunt, as it has generally failed to defend peer-to-peer file-sharing sites in the years since the 2005 MGM v Grokster ruling. A federal judge and a panel of appeals judges agreed that Fung had "induced" others to infringe copyright. Fung had "red flag" knowledge that there was infringing content on his site. He promoted the fact that popular TV shows and movies were there to get more ads.

It's a long-awaited vindication for the MPAA.

"[This settlement] sends a strong message that those who build businesses around encouraging, enabling, and helping others to commit copyright infringement are themselves infringers and will be held accountable for their illegal actions," MPAA chairman Chris Dodd said in a statement.

While the lawsuits take a long time to come to fruition, the entertainment industry has been pitching no-hitters when it comes to suing websites where peer-to-peer technology is used to trade copyrighted files. Napster, Grokster, KaZaa, and Limewire are the biggest tombstones in a growing graveyard of file-sharing websites. None of them were able to avoid liability in court, and many paid hefty settlements. Limewire, for example, paid the RIAA $105 million.

It's only the user-generated content sites that have been able to use the DMCA Safe Harbor defense that isoHunt tried, but failed, to use. Video-sharing site Veoh, for instance, beat Universal Music when it was found to be protected by Safe Harbor—but the company went bankrupt in the process. YouTube has spent $100 million fighting a copyright lawsuit brought by Viacom, which is still being litigated.

-t

[DamianTV]

IsoHunt is so much better than The Popup Bay.

I should go off on a rant over what is Piracy and what is not, but I've already used up my daily allowance of Verbal Diahhrea in another thread.

[kpitcher]

Torrents are not safe to use to download any copyrighted material. Not just whomever is hosting the torrent, every user who is getting the torrent's IP is public and can be subjected to a cease and desist or worse. I had a few letters from companies for clients in my ISP days, thankfully for the clients all of them were just C+D. Anyone who still uses torrents for that purpose is asking for trouble.

[Restore America Now]

Torrents are not safe to use to download any copyrighted material. Not just whomever is hosting the torrent, every user who is getting the torrent's IP is public and can be subjected to a cease and desist or worse. I had a few letters from companies for clients in my ISP days, thankfully for the clients all of them were just C+D. Anyone who still uses torrents for that purpose is asking for trouble.

VPNs make this issue moot. Speaking of, I really should renew mine...

[DamianTV]

Torrents are not safe to use to download any copyrighted material. Not just whomever is hosting the torrent, every user who is getting the torrent's IP is public and can be subjected to a cease and desist or worse. I had a few letters from companies for clients in my ISP days, thankfully for the clients all of them were just C+D. Anyone who still uses torrents for that purpose is asking for trouble.

I've never had a letter, and I ask for trouble as much as I possibly can.

[kpitcher]

VPNs make this issue moot. Speaking of, I really should renew mine...
Make sure you're using a VPN in a country that won't buckle to a warrant for info.

http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/

I still say torrents are simply a bad idea for file sharing. On the other hand... newsgroups are still chock full of everything under the sun.

[muh_roads]

Make sure you're using a VPN in a country that won't buckle to a warrant for info.

http://blog.hidemyass.com/2011/09/23/lulzsec-fiasco/

I still say torrents are simply a bad idea for file sharing. On the other hand... newsgroups are still chock full of everything under the sun.

A list of those countries would be useful. That article is tl;dr

[helmuth_hubener]

I always just use The Pirate Bay. With Adblock on (or NoScript), it's fine. The rest come and go.

[youngbuck]

I thought ISO Hunt closed down several years ago. I used to d/l from them, until their site was turned upside down due to legal threats or whatever. Ever since, the domain has stayed active, but the tracker has either been not functioning or essentially neutered. Anyway, use a good private tracker. Public trackers are for downloading things that you don't care if are tracked or not.

[Peace Piper]

VPNs make this issue moot. Speaking of, I really should renew mine...

With a credit card?


Edit: I just went to Isohunt (no vpn) and it worked fine.

[AngryCanadian]

Screw the MPAA/RIAA they claim that you as user you are breaking the
copyright infringement laws thus are destroying musicians,actors fortunes and businesses which they had build upon.
Yet what the MPAA/RIAA claims is just the opposite of it.

[cindy25]

they will just change domain names.

and no torrent site could ever come up with $110 million

I don't know why they bother having a US domain anyway. they know the US govt backs Hollywood all the way.

what I don't understand is why give up, when the amount is company bankruptcy. would it not have been better to spend the company money on a trial. not much difference between $110 million and $600 million. either way the MPAA SOBs will not get much, and more sites will pop up.

so stupid because the studios could use torrents, with commercials, to cheaply market their shows.

[Barrex]

Piratebay, Demonoid....

Internet rebel bases are dying........

Where to go now?

[Jackie Moon]

they will just change domain names.

and no torrent site could ever come up with $110 million

I don't know why they bother having a US domain anyway. they know the US govt backs Hollywood all the way.

what I don't understand is why give up, when the amount is company bankruptcy. would it not have been better to spend the company money on a trial. not much difference between $110 million and $600 million. either way the MPAA SOBs will not get much, and more sites will pop up.

so stupid because the studios could use torrents, with commercials, to cheaply market their shows.

Agree with all of that.

They should realize that they'll never be able to stop it, so it would be better to adapt and use it themselves. They'd be better off putting out their own official HD versions and then counting the viewership for advertising.

When the 49ers aren't on TV here I watch it streaming online on one of the free sites. The NFL and networks have tried for years to stop it but they can't and never will. The thing is that I still end up watching their ads but they miss out on money from them because they don't get to count us in the numbers of viewers.

If the network added a free HD stream on their site most people would use that instead. Then both sides win... I get a reliable good quality stream and they get to charge more for ads.

[MRK]

Anyone who lacks the foresight to not run a torrent site while in a country with fascist copyright laws might actually be two bricks short of a full house.

Then again, it is a sad truth that many tech-oriented individuals are somewhat like idiot savants who are so specialized that they lack what many would consider common sense or reasonable consideration of the realities of the Western legal frameworks and corrupt societies.

Want to run a torrent site? Run the site in a country where the authorities wont shut you down and for goodness' sake don't do it while you're actually in one of those countries where the copyright mafias run amok.

This happened to one of the Pirate Bay founders while he was in Cambodia. Sure, there's no copyright laws there, but he was extradited on charges from 3 years ago owing to 'crimes' he allegedly committed while in Sweden. What is perhaps interesting is that these were for hacking charges, not actually copyright infringement charges. But like in any land with 10,000 laws, if you have a digital footprint and you poke the man with the big stick in the eye, he's going to clobber you wherever he sees you let your guard down.

Perhaps this was not as obvious 10 years ago as it is today, so I can consider their position as reasonable. And at the same time, I respect them for making a stand.

[hillertexas]

MPAA Says It Has No Way Of Measuring The Damage From Piracy (But Wants Damages Anyway) 10/17/13


If you read stories about movie piracy, you’ll hear the industry throw around some very specific numbers about how much money is lost to pirates by the U.S. movie business every year, but when it comes time to actually detail those damages in court, the MPAA says actual piracy damages “are not capable of meaningful measurement.”

TorrentFreak reports on a recent federal court filing by the MPAA in its lawsuit against a BitTorrent search engine.

The search engine would like to make the argument that piracy is not hurting the movie industry and intends to present evidence to support this contention. But the MPAA has requested that this issue be excluded from the trial because measuring the actual economic impact of piracy on the movie industry is too complex.

“To permit consideration of actual damages under these circumstances would be perverse – and particularly unfair – given that Plaintiffs elected statutory damages precisely because their actual damages are not capable of meaningful measurement,” reads the filing.

The MPAA also states that this is all a non-issue, saying that the search engine “should not be permitted to exploit the inherent difficulty of proving actual damages in a case such as this as a basis for lowering the statutory damages award, especially when the very purpose of statutory damages was to provide a remedy that is not dependent on proof of actual damages.”

The search engine says it is just seeking a balanced judgement, rather than the $600 million in statutory damages it currently faces for thousands of alleged violations.

Allowing both sides to present evidence of the actual impact of piracy (or lack thereof) would, according to the search engine, “allow the jury to infer that Plaintiffs have not suffered any actual damages, which can be contrasted with the financial condition of Defendants in the jury fashioning an appropriate award.”

The defendant claims that if the movie industry continued to make uninterrupted profits with no decline in revenue from piracy, “the jury could conclude that it would be unjust and a windfall to award Plaintiffs anything more than the near $3 million statutory minimum.”

The court has questioned why MPAA is seeking $600 million in damages when it admits that the defendant would be bankrupted with a judgement of only $2 million to $5 million.

“So why are you making such a fetish about 2,000 or 3,000 or 10,000 or 100 copyrights?” asked the court.

To which an MPAA lawyer responded that “the extraordinarily important purpose is to…send a message to other would-be infringers.”

At this, the court asked, “But if you strip him of all his assets — and you’re suggesting that a much lesser number of copyright infringements would accomplish that, where is the deterrence by telling the world that you took someone’s resources away because of illegal conduct entirely or 50 times over?”

When it comes to speaking with the press or politicians, the MPAA has thrown around several, very specific numbers citing damage done to the U.S. movie industry, like $2.7 billion in one story, or $6.1 billion in another.

http://consumerist.com/2013/10/17/mpaa-says-it-has-no-way-of-measuring-the-damage-from-piracy-but-wants-damages-nonetheless/

[torchbearer]

kickass works well

[dannno]

kickass works well

Yes, as do some iterations of piratebay.

I don't use any of them first, I use google first. So google induces more piracy than anybody I imagine. Google does remove links on occasion when the request is made, but the more they do that the more people will turn to search engines that don't, so it's not any good for google.

[InterestedParticipant]

Setup to fail. But not after capturing millions of IP addresses of regular users, which he no doubt has to turn over. It was a very attractive honey pot.

[HOLLYWOOD]

How's that MPAA/RIAA lobbyist whore Chris Dodd doing these days? I'm sure the snake is banking bonus checks with all his MPAA written legislation to the whores on capital hill to push through. Since HOLLYWOOD is basically a Cultural Marxist center of propaganda and mind control entertainment have at the rigged garbage of remakes and reruns.


MPAA Says It Has No Way Of Measuring The Damage From Piracy (But Wants Damages Anyway) 10/17/13



http://consumerist.com/2013/10/17/mpaa-says-it-has-no-way-of-measuring-the-damage-from-piracy-but-wants-damages-nonetheless/

[dannno]

You used to have to work pretty hard to pirate and find stuff back in the day, if you think about it. I'm not saying it wasn't there, I'm saying you had to have more skill and resourcefulness than simply downloading a program and then download a torrent file off google. And really in part it is because the RIAA keeps forcing piraters to come up with new ways of pirating. Maybe we should thank the RIAA.

It's so easy today to download entire series of shows, movies, applications.. It amazes me that the RIAA keeps fighting when it just hurts them more.

[jclay2]

I don't know about torrents that much, but I am very surprised sites like freetvproject are able to run without being shutdown.

[ObiRandKenobi]

how much did this guy make from isohunt?

[torchbearer]

You used to have to work pretty hard to pirate and find stuff back in the day, if you think about it. I'm not saying it wasn't there, I'm saying you had to have more skill and resourcefulness than simply downloading a program and then download a torrent file off google. And really in part it is because the RIAA keeps forcing piraters to come up with new ways of pirating. Maybe we should thank the RIAA.

It's so easy today to download entire series of shows, movies, applications.. It amazes me that the RIAA keeps fighting when it just hurts them more.

That is what i find the most humorous about the whole thing.
the more they fight it, the easier it gets to find it.
kinda like prohibited drugs.

[torchbearer]

how much did this guy make from isohunt?

he services more people in one hour than the healthcare.org site can handle all day.

[QuickZ06]

And I will just set this down here....


Didn’t bother paying for AMC to watch “Breaking Bad”? As far as Vince Gilligan is concerned, you were doing the show a favor.

“Breaking Bad” creator Gilligan told the BBC that illegal downloading of his series — which wrapped its run in late September — “helped” boost the show’s popularity and built its “brand awareness.”

“[Piracy] led to a lot of people watching the series who otherwise would not have,” Gilligan said.

Gilligan did concede, however, that piracy, while raising awareness of the show, had a flattening effect on his wallet.

“The downside is a lot of folks who worked on the show would have made more money, myself included, if all those downloads had been legal,” Gilligan said.

Per TorrentFreak, the series finale of the show, which aired Sept. 29, racked up more than half a million illegal downloads.

“Breaking Bad,” which returned for its final eight episodes after a nearly yearlong break in August, experienced a substantial ratings boost with its last run of episodes. With its August return, the series grabbed 5.9 million total viewers, a 102 jump over the previous year’s season premiere. The series finale grabbed 10.3 million total viewers.

http://tv.yahoo.com/news/breaking-bad-creator-vince-gilligan-piracy-helped-meth-191419565.html