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MPAA Files Lawsuits Targeting Major Torrent Sites

Posted by CowboyNeal on Fri Feb 24, 2006 04:40 AM
from the not-so-fast dept.
Government The Courts Media Movies The Internet News
diverge_s writes "Slyck news reports on a new wave of lawsuits the MPAA has filed against major Bit Torrent search sites including: Torrentspy, Isohunt, Torrentbox, Niteshadow and Bthub. From the article: '"Website operators who abuse technology to facilitate infringements of copyrighted works by millions of people are not anonymous - they can and will be stopped," said John G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. "Disabling these powerful networks of illegal file distribution is a significant step in stemming the tide of piracy on the Internet."'"
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Anonymous Coward writes "Robert X Cringely is postulating today that as bandwidth applications grow, the data centers will never be ready to serve 30 million concurrent streams of data. Akamai, with its tens of thousands of servers spread in an intelligent topology, still can't serve more than 150,000 concurrent streams, which is never going to impress the TV network exec used to audiences in the millions. Cringely choruses that secure P2P is the solution to delivering not only high quality video but also to audiences that scale in the millions. BitTorrent seems to have worn out it's welcome with the MPAA recently, so maybe the future holds P2P networks owned and managed by Hollywood?"
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MPAA Files Lawsuits Targeting Major Torrent Sites 25 Comments More /

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  • But noone told the sites be sued? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by sandstorming (850026) <johnsee@sandstor m i ng.com> on Friday February 24 2006, @04:44AM (#14791176)
    From the article: The operators of these indexing sites appear surprised at the MPAA's decision to sue, as they have yet to receive any notification. "Funny, they didn't email me," Gary from ISOHunt said. "I'm not too concerned because we deal with copyright requests everyday, some of them from studios MPAA represents." "Justin" from TorrentSpy echoed Gary's skepticism. "I guess I will learn more when I see what they have filed exactly. [I'm] not sure why they are suing when we comply with DMCA requests but I guess we will learn more down the road."

  • FYI (Score:5, Informative)

    by Kawahee (901497) on Friday February 24 2006, @04:44AM (#14791178) Homepage Journal
    A quick glance at TorrentSpy [torrentspy.com] shows that they haven't given up, they're still dishing out torrents. They have a news story about it, but they don't seem to be too concerned.

    I remember when the MPAA did this last time and the torrent sites shut down completely because it was in their subpoena (sp?) thing, so does this mean that TorrentSpy is defying the MPAA and (potentially) putting themselves up for harsher penalties?

    • Re:FYI (Score:4, Informative)

      by Kjella (173770) on Friday February 24 2006, @05:09AM (#14791235) Homepage
      I remember when the MPAA did this last time and the torrent sites shut down completely because it was in their subpoena (sp?) thing, so does this mean that TorrentSpy is defying the MPAA and (potentially) putting themselves up for harsher penalties?

      Well, from the interview it seems they haven't recieved anything from the court, only been informed that a lawsuit has been filed. Once they do get a court order (I believe subpoenas are only request for information), and have something like 24-72 hours to comply (I don't remember exactly), we'll see if they're going to stick to their guns.

  • searching is not illegal (Score:5, Insightful)

    by mrshowtime (562809) on Friday February 24 2006, @04:44AM (#14791180)
    Search engines are not illegal in the USA. You can use a search engine to search for anything. You can use a search engine to find a prostitute or drugs and other forms of illegal "entertainment" so why does copyright infringement the ipso-facto crime of the century? There are a lot of illegal bitorrent files and there are a lot of legal files. I hope someone challenges the MPAA on this.

      • And the same old tired misnomers. (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Rocketship Underpant (804162) on Friday February 24 2006, @05:51AM (#14791366)
        "most BT traffic is illegitimate"

        Not all people consider sharing of information and media to be "illegitimate". The idea that culture can be controlled and bottled up by powerful media companies is a quaint 20th century notion.

        You are quite correct in questioning the effect of any ban. Bit-torrent networks and other types of filesharing are rooted in basic human behaviour and desires. That's not going to change any time soon.

            • Re:Same tired old argument (Score:5, Insightful)

              by Casualposter (572489) on Friday February 24 2006, @09:26AM (#14791976) Journal
              Does it occur to anyone that by restricting the torrent sites and trying to destroy file sharing and music sharing that the real target of this is not piracy, but an attempt to destroy the growing ability of independent artists to make a name for themselves without the big labels? It looks to me like piracy is not the issue, but rather market dominance. Once the MPAA, RIAA have destroyed this upstart internet thing, they will then embrace the technology to distribute the content that they want on the terms that they want. Think about pay per view for EVERYTHING.

  • Gracias (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2006, @04:45AM (#14791182)
    Thank you MPAA, I didn't know about a couple of those!

  • There is some more info here... (Score:5, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 24 2006, @04:47AM (#14791186)
    1. Boing Boing [boingboing.net]
    2. Slyck Forums [slyck.com]
    3. Another blogger with some good quotes [hishamrana.com]
    4. Normality Net with more info [normalitynet.com]
    5. Amit's Page with even more commentary [blogspot.com]

    Drive by linkings!
  • Ho ho ho. So can I look forward to an addition to the a href="http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php">Pirate Bays legal threats page ?.

    P2P, torrents etc. are simply like having the best radio station and film channel in the world. It lets me try out stuff without spending my hard earned cash (an ever decreasing amount of which I have to spend on "non essentials" such as entertainment) so I know that I like something before I buy it.

    Oh how the *AA dinosaurs futiley roared as the small furry mamalls took over their world :)

          • Re:new addition to pirate bay legal threats page ? (Score:5, Insightful)

            by Haeleth (414428) on Friday February 24 2006, @07:27AM (#14791611) Journal
            I'm tired of people proudly justifying morally bankrupt actions based on wordplay.

            And I'm tired of people assuming that the only possible reason anyone might want to insist on using precise terminology is in the mistaken belief that this might justify morally bankrupt actions.

            Where in the post you replied to did it say "it's okay because it's not stealing"?

            Where in the post you replied to did it say "copyright infringement is not wrong"?

            Nowhere.

            Why are you incapable of understanding that people might view copyright infringement as morally wrong, and yet still desire people to use the correct name for it, instead of calling it stealing, which it isn't? Why are you incapable of understanding that there is a reason why we have different laws on different subjects, with different penalties for different crimes?

            Copyright infringement and theft are both illegal, but they are illegal under different laws, are judged on different criteria, and are punished in different ways. They affect the victim in different ways and harm the economy in different ways. They are no more the same thing than rape and murder are the same thing.

            That is why you should use different names for them. Not because one is any less illegal than the other. Not because one is any more moral than the other. Merely because while both are wrong and both are illegal, they are nevertheless not the same thing.

  • Freedom for the Culture! (Score:5, Insightful)

    by rvalles (649635) <vallesroc.gmail@com> on Friday February 24 2006, @05:09AM (#14791236)
    Millions of people, they say. Maybe it's time to start listening to the will of those millions instead of listening to just a few industry-paid lobbysts.

    Freedom [wikipedia.org] for [gnu.org] the [ucla.edu] Culture [wikipedia.org]!!!

  • Absurd (Score:5, Insightful)

    by kumachan1983 (956909) on Friday February 24 2006, @05:18AM (#14791269)
    I had to make an account just to respond to this. Im a long time reader so it was about time anyway. Listen this is just history repeating itself. We saw it First with Napster and music. Then Kazaa came up and all of its clones. Then they attacked the few major torrent sites in existance with lawsuits. What happened everytime? Pirating evolved, its like the MPAA and other such organizations serve as nature in the darwinism that is file sharing. Every time they strike down one site or technology it just evolves and gets better. I remember the days before bittorrent and how much of a pain it could be to find a specific file, now because they have forced us to we have a much more efficiant and anonomous system to distribute illegal software. I say bring them on because I'm excited to see what new and improved ways will come forward to share files. Not to mention the fact that if they quit trying to stop it (amplifying the problem) and started trying to profit off of it they would be doing much better. Look at the advertising oppertunities....

  • Thanks, didn't know half of these (Score:5, Funny)

    by Werrismys (764601) on Friday February 24 2006, @05:29AM (#14791306)
    slashdot is educational.

  • The Pirate Bay loves these guys (Score:4, Informative)

    by feyhunde (700477) on Friday February 24 2006, @05:43AM (#14791341)
    Go read http://thepiratebay.org/legal.php [thepiratebay.org]

    Most of these sites aren't hosted in the US, or in countries that recognize torrents as being pirated material.

  • You have stolen enough (Score:5, Funny)

    by tcornelissen (897694) on Friday February 24 2006, @06:08AM (#14791416) Homepage
    More with your mouse over the bottom of each page in the press release: http://www.mpaa.org/press_releases/2006_02_21_raze r.pdf [mpaa.org]
    You will vind a hidden registration link.
    You guys have now stolen so much, the MPAA cannot afford anymore to pay a $30 registration fee to Iteksoft. http://www.iteksoft.com/modules.php?op=modload&nam e=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=4 [iteksoft.com]
  • This is IH from isoHunt.com. We also run TorrentBox.com. Some clarifications for comments here:

      * Yes, this is MPAA's FUD. The lawsuit included.
      * No, BitTorrent and P2P are not illegal (yet). They are not solely tools of thieves as the MPAA like to portray them as. There are many legal torrents in isoHunt's search index.
      * No, I haven't got anything from MPAA about this lawsuit of theirs, but the press release is real and we are working with other sites, sued or yet to be sued, and the EFF on this.
      * This is significant as they are suing search engines. isoHunt.com is a search engine. It does not discriminate, it index by algorithm. If we can, we'll be pulling in Google and Yahoo to say a few words that search engines are not illegal (yet).
      * No, I'm not a crook. I see P2P as the new VCR, and I intend on proving that P2P can be used to the benefit of content creators, as a cheap and global vehicle for distribution and promotion.

    Read more and comment on my forum announcement if you like:
    http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=38933 [isohunt.com]

    • Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA (Score:4, Interesting)

      by cliffski (65094) on Friday February 24 2006, @05:09AM (#14791239) Homepage
      An interesting but flawed philosophy. You seem to imply that if the IP holders were just scraping by and making ends meet, you would be happy for the torrent sites to be taken down?
      Im just about making ends meet as a software develoepr, and one of my games is available as a torrent. No doubt this isnt exactly helping sales. So I suppose that the torrent sites you support check the financial data of each submitted torrent, will spot that I'm a solo developer who needs the cash, and decline to list torrents of my stuff right?
      Bullshit. This is just freeloaders getting everything they can for free because they think they wont get caught. Dont insult everyones intelligence by dressing it up as some kind of robin hood tale.
      Many things the **IA do is bullshit, but closing torrent sites that encourage illegal content is fine by me. Bittorrent is a superb system that works wonders for distributing game demos and movie trailers etc. By defending its usage to steal IP, your just going to bring the whole system down.

      • Re:A Message from the Internet to the MPAA (Score:5, Informative)

        by rm69990 (885744) on Friday February 24 2006, @05:30AM (#14791309)
        Ummm, you do realize sites like isoHunt don't have torrents *submitted* to them, they index .torrent files available elsewhere on the internet, much the same way Google indexes websites available elsewhere on the internet. They remove torrent links upon request, have you actually bothered emailing any of these sites to ask them to remove your torrent?

    • Re:Misplaced effort (Score:5, Funny)

      by DeathToAllah (956853) <DeathToAllah@yahoo.com> on Friday February 24 2006, @05:37AM (#14791328)
      If they'd put half the effort into actually making quality films as they do with these worthless lawsuits, I'd gladly pay $30 for theatre admission and snacks for my girlfriend and I. Until then, I'm paying what it's worth to see these movies. Do they admit blow up dolls to movie theatres nowadays?

    • Re:Up-side-down People! (Score:5, Interesting)

      by LordLucless (582312) on Friday February 24 2006, @09:43AM (#14792053)
      It's one advantage to being a cartel^H^H^H^H^H^H assosciation. It's always "the RIAA" or "the MPAA" doing the suing. The individual companies aren't being assosciated with the bad publicity. If you started seeing "Sony sues grandpa without computer" or "Vivendi sues 13 year old girl", then you might start getting some reaction to the bad press. As it is, the MPAA is sort of like a meta-corporation. Corporations exist to limit the risk to individuals involved in the corporation. The MPAA exists to limit the risk to the companies involved in it.

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