IsoHunt Told To Pull Torrent Files Offline

suraj.sun writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: "The founder of popular Bit Torrent site IsoHunt, Gary Fung, has been ordered to remove the .torrent files for all infringing content — an order that could result in the site shutting down. US District Judge Stephen Wilson issued the order last week after years of back-and-forths over the legality of IsoHunt and Fung's two other sites (Torrentbox and Podtropolis). Fung claims he's still hoping for a more agreeable resolution that won't result in IsoHunt closing its doors, but for now, things aren't looking good for the torrent site."

Re:Bah....Bah

[spazdor]

Have you been having trouble finding pirated content on TPB yet? 'Cause I sure haven't.

Key excerpts from TFA

[emurphy42]

The movie studios had brought in expert witnesses stating that a statistical sampling of the content and server logs showed that nearly all of the content infringed copyrights, and about half of the downloads were made within the US. Fung dismissed this as "junk science" but did not present any sort of evidence showing that this wasn't a valid approach.

Fung previously tried to argue that his sites were just another search engine that just happened to pick up copyrighted content, but the studios countered with evidence that his search code was specifically tuned to find copyrighted material.

it would be nearly impossible for Fung to actively investigate every single file to see whether it's legal or not. Fung believes this goes outside of the DMCA and that the MPAA should provide a list of links to files that it wants taken down instead.

Re:Keep dreaming.....

[Anonymous Coward]

The first rule about u***** is that you don't talk about u*****

Re:Bah....Bah

[Anonymous Coward]

If that was the case than any quickstop that sold scouring pads should be sued and shut down. They KNOW for a fact that people aren't buying them from there for anything but a crack strainer. Just like all the places that sold that little rose in the glass tube knowing good and well all they did was throw the rose out and use the tube for a crack stem. They would also have to be sued and shut down for selling blunt wraps.

I know they did this stuff cause I used to work at a quickstop. Go to any convenience store in the US and try and find one that isn't knowingly selling stuff for people to do something illegal with.

Re:Bah....Bah

[Khyber]

'If Google provided a separate torrent search area for searching for torrent files, they would have a 95% illegal content rate"

IT EXISTS.

filetype:torrent is all you need to add to your search term.

Re:Bah....Bah

[dissy]

There are plenty of torrent trackers that are exclusively free/legal content, they aren't being prosecuted

Untrue.

The RIAA presses suits against indie bands distributing their own music they made for a price they choose (Torrents and free respectively), for copyright violations.

It doesn't matter that they are in the right, what matters is it costs years worth of pay to purchase time in court to prove it.

The copyright holder industries have shown time and time again that the only thing they want is to be the sole distribution (at a cost) of all musical media.
Their statements, actions, and behavior all indicate they feel entitled to all music in existence, and how DARE anyone try to steal money from them by making your own music.

Shutting down legal music torrent sites with copyright take down notices and lawsuits, is proof that any amount of infringing material from 0% up to 99% is justification to them, and they have (and will continue until slapped down hard in court) to do so.

As for the site operations intentions to induce mass scale copyright violation... That is solidly not legal however, so your overall point is correct on that alone.

Re:Bah....Bah

[textstring]

They don't even host the actual torrent files.

So why does every torrent's that I download from isoHunt filename start with [isoHunt] ?
If they were a neutral strictly search site they wouldn't be drawing so much attention.

Re:lol

[Little_Professor]

From Isohunt's twitter feed: @arstechnica, @wired on us "Ordered to Remove Infringing Content". There's no order, only PROPOSED order & I'd appreciate better reporting