9th Circuit Affirms IsoHunt Decision; No DMCA Safe Harbor 211
crankyspice writes "The federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals recently affirmed, in Columbia Pictures Industries v. Fung (docket no. 10-55946), the summary judgment and injunctions against Gary Fung and his IsoHunt (and 3d2k-it) websites, finding liability for secondary copyright infringement for the sites' users' BitTorrent (and eDonkey) file sharing, under the 'inducement' theory (set forth by the Supreme Court in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Studios, Inc. v. Grokster Ltd. , 545 U.S. 913 (2005)). The injunctions were left largely intact, with modifications required to make it more clear to the defendants what BitTorrent (etc) related activity they're enjoined from." Bloomberg has a short article on the case, too.
Re:I wonder how much longer (Score:5, Informative)
Wait. You see exactly this. At the bottom it will say "not showing 5 results Click here to show the DMCA takedown notices at chillingeffects.org"
Also, the takedown notices include the URL to be taken down, so it's still available.
Re:9th circuit is a joke (Score:3, Informative)
It sees more cases, so numerically there are more overturned. On average it's rulings are overturned about as often as any other circuit court in the country.
Re:Huh? (Score:5, Informative)
The DMCA Safe Harbor provision is what allows sites like Youtube to operate. Since Youtube is a fully automated site in which users upload their own content without approval from Youtube on a case-by-case basis, Youtube does not have full control over the content of their website in real time. Without the Safe Harbor provision, any copyrighted material that appears on Youtube would constitute unwillful copyright infringement by Youtube regardless of who put it there. The Safe Harbor provision shields them from primary and secondary liability.
However, obtaining the benefits of the DMCA cannot be done without also adhering to the requirements of the DMCA and the OCILLA (the legal name for the Safe Harbor provision). Several of the requirements set out by these acts include making a good faith effort to prevent copyrighted content from being uploaded or inducing access to copyrighted content. In short, site operators have to perform at least some level of self-policing in order to obtain protection under OCILLA.
In the case of ISOHunt, it's possible to search by various categories including movies, music, applications, etc... as well as view latest releases by the same categories. A quick look at the top torrents, most recent torrents, top cross indexed torrents, and top searches show that the site operators made no effort to prevent copyrighted content from being made accessible.
The court ruled against them not because they engaged in direct infringement themselves, but because they promoted infringement and profited from that infringement. If they wanted the courts to take them seriously, then they shouldn't have displayed "aXXo" and "jaybob" as the top searches on the front page for years on end, especially when those searches yield infringing results. Of the top 1,000 searches on ISOhunt.com right now all of them are in search of either copyrighted content, or downright illegal content.
Re:Huh? (Score:4, Informative)
Yup. Youtube has a massive number of programs and features, both automated and manual, which are purpose designed to handle copyrighted content. Users are still figuring out novel ways to get around them (such as mirroring a scene from a movie) but Youtube's Copyright handling is the best that I've ever seen and goes way beyond that required by the DMCA