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Torrent site sues recording industry, sets precedent
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by Terri Potratz | September 8, 2008 at 02:56 pm
684 views | 28 Recommendations | 8 comments
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In the wake of threats and Cease and Desist letters from the Canadian Recording Industry Association (CRIA) against numerous torrent sites, isoHunt is launching a retaliative strike against the CRIA with a lawsuit of their own.
This is the first case worldwide where a court will be asked to decide whether .torrent files, and BitTorrent search engines in particular, are infringing copyright or not. Among other things, isoHunt argues that they are just a search engine, like Google, and that they have no control over the files they find elsewhere on the web. The site is indexing other BitTorrent trackers and indexers, without human intervention, and allows its users to find content that is scattered across the web.
isoHunt founder Gary Fung relates that his company complies with all appropriate requests sent by the CRIA, and that they have worked to try to reach and understanding with the them - but "just as with the MPAA in the US, they have ignored our offers of cooperation by the take down of .torrent links to their content files, so long as they provide sufficient identification." Fung has submitted a request to the Court of British Columbia requesting their confirmation that isoHunt and similar torrent sites do not infringe copyright law.
So, should BitTorrent search engines be held liable for the .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data? If so, what does this mean for other search engines, and sites such as YouTube? This landmark case might be the one to define how files can be distributed online, let’s hope the Court of British Columbia will make the right decision.
This could be a really huge development for file sharing sites and how copyright law is handled.
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Most RecentMost Recommended Comments (8)
at 20:33 on September 8th, 2008
I just wanted to cooperate and show that torrent are not only illegal file sharing. In my case I was downloading a Fedora 8 linux ISO and get 50% or so of fake datas.
fredbezies has contributed a photo to this story.
at 21:37 on September 8th, 2008
Terri Potratz, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 07:49 on September 9th, 2008
Interesting. IsoHunt will certainly have the support of music consumers in this fight.
at 09:20 on September 9th, 2008
Well, sure, everyone wants free music. But that's not the point. ;) The point is that it's not the search engine that posted the illegal files. They merely came up in a specific search. If anything it's still the fault / responsibility of the original poster.
We don't sue Google because it occasionally turns up links to kiddy porn. We go after the kiddy pornographers running the kiddy porn sites, or the specific users on picture sharing sites posting kiddy porn.
This issue should be precisely the same. Don't shoot the messenger. Track the message back to its source and shoot the source. ;o] So-to-speak...
Regards,
~Michael Gmirkin
at 09:10 on September 9th, 2008
Terri Potratz, I like this story. It's good stuff.
It's an interesting question. It would seem like precedent would be on their side. Bulletin board systems are not held legally liable for posts made by their subscribers. Likewise, search engines merely scour web sites for specific keywords, etc. They can certainly bring up links to kiddy porn, or copyrighted materials, if the right keywords are entered. But, does that mean the search engine should be held accountable for the files and materials provided by the infinging sites' owners? Or does the liability lie with the infringing site owners and the specific users offering the copyrighted materials?
It's not a search engine's job to do anything more than search, it really doesn't have any control over what individual web sites or users put up on the web. It simply finds and links to the most popular or relevant results for the keywords entered. Sometimes it brings up good stuff, sometimes it brings up bad stuff. It's not the search engine's fault that the bad stuff was on the internet. It's the responsibility of the particular web site (if the business uploaded the content, as opposed to a specific user on a forum, etc.) or the particular user who posted the offending material.
Just my 2c.
~Michael Gmirkin
at 11:48 on September 19th, 2008
Terri Potratz, I like this story. It's good stuff.
at 14:47 on September 22nd, 2008
I'm sorry but I don't feel any pity for these musicians, actors, actress, etc. They complain that we are stealing from them, but after you see how they can afford to have no one but multiple mansion around the world.
In Spain , as well as in other countries, they came with a nice trick that obligate us to pay a tax for each CD, DVD, cell phone, and other storage devices that you buy.
This means that if you are a poor student that have to make a backup copy of your project, you have to give a portion of your "invisible" salary to the artist... why?
If you want to know more about this tax you can go to http://noalcanon.com (Spanish site), for english references click here.
at 06:52 on December 17th, 2008
The MPAA and RIAA are mindless drones paid for by the music and movie industry. There are a lot of artists/actors who are against suing people for hundreds of thousands of dollars for each copyright infrigment.
Torrent files are NOT copyrighted material. You can go to The Pirate Bay web site and download all of the torrent files you want and as long as you do not use them in a bittorrent client you will not be breaking any laws.
The torrent file itself contains NO COPYRIGHTED material. They only point your bittorrent client to trackers which in turn points your client to other people sharing the same data as you are (by using a hash value).
The illegal part comes into play when you open a .torrent file with a bittorrent client and start downloading/uploading copyrighted material. The copyrighted data you are downloading/uploading is the part that is illegal not the actual .torrent file.
The MPAA and RIAA use scare tactics and sadly many people beleive that downloading/uploading any data, including public domain, freeware, or shareware via a bittorrent client is illegal.