isoHunt sues CRIA in self defense, Round 2

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:30 am

I already wrote a fair bit about our legal struggle with CRIA, so I'm not repeating them here again. Since CRIA's initial cease and desist letters (effectively asking us to shutdown entirely), we have tried to reason with CRIA, have petitioned the court on our legal right to exist as a search engine. Both to no avail, since Judge Curtis has denied our "petition" as improper form, and have ordered us to a normal, lengthy and costly legal "action". We have done that this week.

Here's our Statement of Claim (pdf) we just filed for our action at the BC Supreme Court.

As I've written to the Canadian government in the public consultation for upcoming copyright reform, I have high hopes for Canadian copyright laws and its courts to not make the mistakes that have been made elsewhere in the world. We must fight the increasing noise we are drowned in, that file sharing is stealing. I believe we Canadians are especially blessed with musical talent such as Sarah McLachlan, Celine Dion, Nelly Furtado, Lights and many others. So many that our "cultural output" per capita is arguably greater than that of many other countries. And we have done this without the excessive litigation against consumers that the legal climate in countries like our southern neighbor has encouraged. Thanks in part to our lack of DMCA-like copyright laws that does more harm than good.

With continued changes in both the digital marketplace and usage of P2P search engines like isoHunt, I believe now is a better time than ever to put our differences aside with copyright owners, and figure out how we can utilize P2P distribution and social media for the benefit of all. The internet has widened our choice in music more than ever before, and the music industry is live and well contrary to lies of certain lobbyists. The EU have also commissioned a study that found, P2P is not to blame for failures of certain parts of content industries. Why? How? Because P2P is the greatest radio ever.

If you are a musician and agree with us, we would love to hear from you! We have already heard many interesting feedback, like that of a book author, we want to hear more. And I cordially invite you to join our new spinoff, Hexagon.cc. Together, we can create a better future for content distribution and sharing. Same goes out to film makers, software and game developers.

As for CRIA and member record labels, if you come to your sense of reason, I would love to talk to you outside of court. The ball you've dropped on us is back to you.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 6:40 am

It's certainly a sad state and with the recent move against mininova, I have little doubt they are more emboldened than prepared to come to the table for reasonable beneficial discussion.

Sadly we are still repeating history here, and you would hope the 'gatekeepers' of information and content would realize that, and move to work with us instead of taking needless and ultimately useless action against communication, art, sharing, and in my personal view human nature.

What they really seem to want here is not even about p2p but a complete restructuring of the internet, communication, and the sharing of information as a whole.

I can't completely blame them, they have been in control, and control is a great thing to have, if you can get it. History has shown it's never permanent and resisting change at best delays the inevitable. People are social creatures, and we will continue to copy, share, and communicate whether they support it or not. In the end their opposition will only strengthen our resolve and spur new and more creative ways of sharing.

I urge anyone that has not watched it, to grab up a copy of
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/

it only runs about an hour and 15 minutes and basically explains the history of the suppression of information, sharing, communication, and how filesharing is merely the newest embodiment of a need to communicate, copy, and share that human beings have had since the dawn of time.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 7:20 am

Nicely said Crooked Ferret. I also have concerns about who actually owns copyrighted material and do the recording studios have the backing of their own artists in some instants.

Such as

Torrentfreak wrote:

Efforts by Warner Music to prevent music piracy have gone so far that indie artist Edwyn Collins is unable to share one of his own tracks on MySpace. In a response to the copyright drama, Collins’ manager explains that file-sharers are not the problem, but the labels themselves.

In my humble opinion, I think that those who should be asking for copyright protection are the artists themselves, and not the companies (music files). In these days of the internet and information highway, where is a list compiled by companies of what is the property they believe they own, what date the copyright came into effect and its expiry date.

http://www.asiamedia.ucla.edu/article-eastasia.asp?parentid=31607

Quote:

A District Court judge hearing an intellectual property infringement case has lashed out at the lack of a centralised system for checking who owns the copyright for recorded material.

He continues

Quote:

"It is well established that it is very, very difficult to find out who the [copyright] owner is," Judge Chua said. "I have said before that there should be a register of every film and every piece of music made and who is the owner."

I tried to find out more about copyright laws (man what a mess) in Australia and hoped to quote some of the parts from it, but guess what?

Quote:

Public perception, is that its time for change. Content delivery should be in line with customers needs and not outdated business practices.

If isoHunt can reason with the apparently unreasonable, it would be a PR exercise in showing that Movie and recording companies can work with new technology, not just act like horse breeders at the showing of the new Automobile that Mr. Ford just made useful and affordable to all people. As we know, not all printers produce counterfeit notes, and not all bittorrent sites have no legal uses. Hell, for that matter, not all movie makers produce pornographic material.

For the sake of their own customers, and future customers, talking with Gary Fung, just may open new ideas that everyone can still share files while the rightful copyright owner can still earn money. In my opinion, copyright laws have failed, its time to work out new methods, legal actions only serve to send those determined to proceed with their activities to other technologies. Ones that the MPAA and CRIAA and others may have no control over at all. For your own sakes, it would be wise to talk to visionaries such as Gary.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:23 am

Crooked_Ferret wrote:

It's certainly a sad state and with the recent move against mininova, I have little doubt they are more emboldened than prepared to come to the table for reasonable beneficial discussion.

Sadly we are still repeating history here, and you would hope the 'gatekeepers' of information and content would realize that, and move to work with us instead of taking needless and ultimately useless action against communication, art, sharing, and in my personal view human nature.

What they really seem to want here is not even about p2p but a complete restructuring of the internet, communication, and the sharing of information as a whole.

I can't completely blame them, they have been in control, and control is a great thing to have, if you can get it. History has shown it's never

permanent and resisting change at best delays the inevitable. People are social creatures, and we will continue to copy, share, and communicate whether they support it or not. In the end their opposition will only strengthen our resolve and spur new and more creative ways of sharing.

I urge anyone that has not watched it, to grab up a copy of
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/

it only runs about an hour and 15 minutes and basically explains the history of the suppression of information, sharing, communication, and how filesharing is merely the newest embodiment of a need to communicate, copy, and share that human beings have had since the dawn of time.

well said i totally agree with you rep +1 you

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:09 pm

IH wrote:

We must fight the increasing noise we are drowned in, that file sharing is stealing.

The one thing I can't help but find ironic time and time again, was that Hollywood was founded by "pirates"; back in the day, the technology to record and reproduce motion pictures was highly patented and copyrighted, but some ingenious students stole some equipment from a university and moved out West, formally founding what eventually evolved to and became the motion picture industry.

And it's inevitable progeny are now attempting to crush out not only an emergent technology but this site along others which merely index this technology, without really hosting (I refer to the torrents). And besides, as mentioned, not all torrents contain copyrighted material. From open source software to creative commons material in general to even small up-and-coming self-promoting authors, musicians, to documentaries (such as steal this film I might add).

I can only hope I am not the only one who has recognized this immense irony.

Crooked_Ferret wrote:

Sadly we are still repeating history here, and you would hope the 'gatekeepers' of information and content would realize that, and move to work with us instead of taking needless and ultimately useless action against communication, art, sharing, and in my personal view human nature.

Which ties in with what I have just mentioned. Technology changes. If the official copyright holders become so entangled on one or two increasingly inefficient concepts of production and means of reaching a consumer base (especially considering that with all the lobbying patents and copyrights can basically be extended indefinitely, denying or firmly resisting any and all change), they are practically begging for a third party to come along with a more efficient means.

I personally am still wondering why **AA's and CRIA and the like have not decided to take to on-line distributions on private trackers yet. There certainly is potential there. I can only imagine this is because p2p was designed more with sharing in mind than making a profit. But still, with all the money empire they sit on, you'd think they could put many servers and mirrors up.

In any regard, you've done nothing wrong iH. I'll continue to try and do my part, if only to help spread awareness.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 1:19 pm

IH wrote:

I already wrote a fair bit about our legal struggle with CRIA, so I'm not repeating them here again. Since CRIA's initial cease and desist letters (effectively asking us to shutdown entirely), we have tried to reason with CRIA, have petitioned the court on our legal right to exist as a search engine. Both to no avail, since Judge Curtis has denied our "petition" as improper form, and have ordered us to a normal, lengthy and costly legal "action". We have done that this week.

Here's our Statement of Claim (pdf) we just filed for our action at the BC Supreme Court.

As I've written to the Canadian government in the public consultation for upcoming copyright reform, I have high hopes for Canadian copyright laws and its courts to not make the mistakes that have been made elsewhere in the world. We must fight the increasing noise we are drowned in, that file sharing is stealing. I believe we Canadians are especially blessed with musical talent such as Sarah McLachlan, Celine Dion, Nelly Furtado, Lights and many others. So many that our "cultural output" per capita is arguably greater than that of many other countries. And we have done this without the excessive litigation against consumers that the legal climate in countries like our southern neighbor has encouraged. Thanks in part to our lack of DMCA-like copyright laws that does more harm than good.

With continued changes in both the digital marketplace and usage of P2P search engines like isoHunt, I believe now is a better time than ever to put our differences aside with copyright owners, and figure out how we can utilize P2P distribution and social media for the benefit of all. The internet has widened our choice in music more than ever before, and the music industry is live and well contrary to lies of certain lobbyists. The EU have also commissioned a study that found, P2P is not to blame for failures of certain parts of content industries. Why? How? Because P2P is the greatest radio ever.

If you are a musician and agree with us, we would love to hear from you! We have already heard many interesting feedback, like that of a book author, we want to hear more. And I cordially invite you to join our new spinoff, Hexagon.cc. Together, we can create a better future for content distribution and sharing. Same goes out to film makers, software and game developers.

As for CRIA and member record labels, if you come to your sense of reason, I would love to talk to you outside of court. The ball you've dropped on us is back to you.

You need to give the Canadian government a 'NOTICE of Understanding' that you are a Canadian national and not a goverment created entity and you are not subject to their 'private copyrighted law' and save your money and time.their society is just that a private corporation like any other company with rules and if you are not an employee the rules do NOT apply unless you CONCENT so do not Concent.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 8:28 pm

First let me be very clear. I hate music/movie industry is handling piracy. I hate how they are suing single mothers for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few songs doesn't warrant an 80,000 fine (A few thousand dollars would be much more reasonable.)

That said....

Gary Fung, how isn't it "filesharing" theft? Technically all the music and movies are the property of the artists and hollywood. When you don't pay for something this is theft. People have a right to profit from their own work. This is simple moral common sense. Are you opposed to people making a living off their own work? Who are we to tell people how much money is "enough" to make off their own work?

I might remind people that the economy also suffers when large numbers of people skip paying for things. Many jobs are lost. Billions of dollars in tax revenue are also lost. This is money that could be spent improving health care, fixing things, etc. Piracy hurts legitimate users too because money that could be spent on delivering a better product has to now be spent on combating piracy.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:03 pm

\\.neo.styles|sSG wrote:

First let me be very clear. I hate music/movie industry is handling piracy. I hate how they are suing single mothers for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few songs doesn't warrant an 80,000 fine (A few thousand dollars would be much more reasonable.)

That said....

Gary Fung, how isn't it "filesharing" theft? Technically all the music and movies are the property of the artists and hollywood. When you don't pay for something this is theft. People have a right to profit from their own work. This is simple moral common sense. Are you opposed to people making a living off their own work? Who are we to tell people how much money is "enough" to make off their own work?

I might remind people that the economy also suffers when large numbers of people skip paying for things. Many jobs are lost. Billions of dollars in tax revenue are also lost. This is money that could be spent improving health care, fixing things, etc. Piracy hurts legitimate users too because money that could be spent on delivering a better product has to now be spent on combating piracy.

The problem here is artists are not profiting from their work. They aren't even allowed to own their own work and do with it as they please.

http://torrentfreak.com/copyright-drama-prevents-artist-from-sharing-music-on-myspace-091007/

What we are suggesting is a completely new method of content distribution. It's not the first time new technology has met with this kind of hostility and misunderstanding.
http://www.stealthisfilm.com/Part2/download.php

What we are questioning here is a system that has built itself upon other people's work. A system that is no longer needed or supported by it's consumers now that it has attacked, demonized, and alienated them.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/markets/2816893/Radiohead-challenges-labels-with-free-album.html

The artists themselves are starting to wake up to the fact that they are part of a culture and that culture doesn't belong to anyone.
That they can distribute it for free and still make a profit, as insane as it sounds the model has proven itself many times now.

There is no longer public domain, thoughts and ideas are permanently in the hands of entities, not even responsible for their creation that insist they can own a image, an idea, and a sound.

I often wonder if we would have classics like mozart and bach available to the world had these same people been in charge then. No symphony would be able to reproduce their pieces without express permission and financial compensation.

This is about a lot more than bittorrent and the potential for piracy it may represent. It's about the control and private ownership of cultural heritage and the end of public domain.

I agree people should be able to make a living off the work they do. What Gary is trying to do is bring to light that there is a new way.
The information is already out there, even the mpaa and cria realize they can not stop it. So they have resorted to intimidation and crude bullying. They had an opportunity years ago to take advantage of this new technology and didn't, and now they have created an entire new industry dedicated to pursuing and bullying their own would be consumers.

It will change more and more as artists realize they no longer need these archaic methods to create and distribute.

Here at Isohunt Gary has always supported Creative Commons, and open source materials and their distribution. As well as supporting those responsible for the creation of those materials.

In the end the argument as it pertains to isohunt is simple though. We are a search index, in many ways no different from google. You're welcome to test this yourself google any popular music or media and add the word torrent to the end of it. You'll find almost identical results.

So why aren't we having this conversation about google?

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:03 pm

\\.neo.styles|sSG,

Because it can be stealing only if file sharing as a whole causes harm to copyright owners. It isn't. And I'm not even talking about social harm, as file sharing is a net positive considering the immense improvement of access that file sharing has enabled through the internet.

See links in my first post:

http://labs.timesonline.co.uk/blog/2009/11/12/do-music-artists-do-better-in-a-world-with-illegal-file-sharing/
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/p2p_not_to_blame_for_content_industry_failures_says_eu.php

And see this poll for different scenarios of sharing, 4/5 of which would be illegal but only 1/5 is truly "stealing":

http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=210065

And for any copyright owner that thinks file sharing is doing more harm than good to their bottomline, we do notice and takedown for that. We don't assume that we know better, but we do hope to push for better alternatives of facing new realities of the internet and how to deal (and may I say, profit) with it.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:03 pm

If I might...

The question itself is flawed. How is sharing of any sort, whether it be handing over your personal belongings to someone, or sharing a file that you have acquired over a p2p theft? As far as I'm concerned, I pay a large sum of money every year to have an internet connection, and filesharing is one of the advantages of paying for this service. I doubt there are many people out there with stolen ISP hook ups.

Take a baseball card...

Every image on that card is protected under copyright law. The team that the player plays for, the logo of the team, the player himself, the league that the team belongs to, and even the company that produced the card. If I, who bought that card with my own money, offered it to anyone who wanted to take it, would that person who did take it be considered a theif?

then we get into reproducing the music, copying and distributing. But with printers today, I could reproduce that card a million times if I wanted to. So long as I'm paying for the ink, the paper, and the electricity to power the printer, I doubt anyone would care. So really, I pay every month to have this internet connection. Who's going to tell me that I'm stealing???

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 9:06 pm

\\.neo.styles|sSG wrote:

Gary Fung, how isn't it "filesharing" theft? Technically all the music and movies are the property of the artists and hollywood. When you don't pay for something this is theft. People have a right to profit from their own work. This is simple moral common sense. Are you opposed to people making a living off their own work? Who are we to tell people how much money is "enough" to make off their own work?

I might remind people that the economy also suffers when large numbers of people skip paying for things. Many jobs are lost. Billions of dollars in tax revenue are also lost. This is money that could be spent improving health care, fixing things, etc. Piracy hurts legitimate users too because money that could be spent on delivering a better product has to now be spent on combating piracy.

would me using bittorrent to download the newest ubuntu version be theft? it is open source, and that would be file sharing... as for copyright law in general, it is heavily flawed...

as for billions of dollars in tax revenue, bollocks to that, the money is better spent in my pocket... show me a government that can do something more efficiently than that of a private citizen... i do not need the government to take my money to create 5 jobs to do the work of one person...

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 10:22 pm

I am a musician and I have my own group on Hexagon dedicated to making music together. It allows us to share our music, collaborate, review and ultimately better ourselves.
I have members from different parts of the world that would never have heard my material if it wasnt for P2P.
Its the best promotion I could ever get and has done nothing less than help me in every way possible. It is also the best form of distribution as it costs nothing for people to hear my music.
If P2P gets shut down, I lose any chance of getting my music heard by anyone outside of my area. I think it can be agreed that this is grossly unfair.
While P2P like anything else will be abused from time to time its not right to assume wrong doing for everyone that uses it.
We are not criminals, we are people that would like to decide for ourselves what something is worth. The only reason this is an issue is because P2P filters the quality products from the bad.
There is no profit involved therefore there is no stealing. Like I said some people will try to make money from P2P, this behaviour is frowned upon by IsoHunt and the rest of the community.
If somebody steals money from the bank do you shut the bank down or deal with the individual involved? In this case the CRIA is trying to close the bank. Which is extremely backward.
P2P is a distribution method. The efforts made trying to shut it down would be better spent working together to try to create something better.
Why destroy when you can build?
I am in full support of IH and wether he is aware of it or not, his efforts have helped a lot of people. I am one of them and he has my gratitude and respect. That is as a musician and a person.
Seeing as music labels make more money from an artists work than the artist themselves, I would say that they are the ones that should be on trial.

I 100% stand by this statement and if need be I dont mind it been used in IsoHunts defense.

Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2009 11:32 pm

\\.neo.styles|sSG wrote:

First let me be very clear. I hate music/movie industry is handling piracy. I hate how they are suing single mothers for hundreds of thousands of dollars. A few songs doesn't warrant an 80,000 fine (A few thousand dollars would be much more reasonable.)

That said....

Gary Fung, how isn't it "filesharing" theft? Technically all the music and movies are the property of the artists and hollywood. When you don't pay for something this is theft. People have a right to profit from their own work. This is simple moral common sense. Are you opposed to people making a living off their own work? Who are we to tell people how much money is "enough" to make off their own work?

I might remind people that the economy also suffers when large numbers of people skip paying for things. Many jobs are lost. Billions of dollars in tax revenue are also lost. This is money that could be spent improving health care, fixing things, etc. Piracy hurts legitimate users too because money that could be spent on delivering a better product has to now be spent on combating piracy.

Are you kidding me??? Ok, after you make filesharing illegal, maybe you should try to make all kinds of sharing illegal. I just bought the new Star Trek movie on Blu Ray. If one of my friends wants to borrow it, and I let him, that should be illegal. Because obviously, if I had said no, he would have gone out and bought it himself. How dare you try to defend a system intended to turn millionaires into billionaires. If there were no filesharing, you think the movie/music companies would spend that extra money on heathcare for the poor??? Are you kidding me??? They would spend the extra money buying the newest model private airplanes. Then they would burn their old planes and dump the toxic remains into the public drinking water. This is a system where people charged with downloading movies/music will face stiffer penalties than people charged with child molestation or manslaughter. The last P2P site owners were sentenced to 2 years in prison just for creating their website. My step mothers ex husband molested her 3 daughters for a period of about a year and he was released after serving 10 months. My brother was killed 4 years ago when his car was struck by a drunk driver. Since it was the drivers first offense, he was sentenced to 5 years probation and 1000 hours of community service. He only spent 1 night in jail. For killing a man. Are you f**kin kidding me???

Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 2:28 am

There remains little to add to what has already been said in this thread.

Fight The Good Fight
Triumph

Gary fights the good fight for the good of us all. If people cannot see this then it is because they refuse to look beyond the veils that surround them. Open your eyes.

Posted: Sat Nov 28, 2009 6:08 am

Regarding this whole issue... I just created an account for this comment...

I'm buying some singles over eBay that I can't otherwise obtain, thanks to filesharing. If it weren't for the thing, I'd never have heard of artists like N-Dubz, Tinchy Stryder and Agnes, among others.

I can't wait to buy it, and, honestly, until the content providers start offering high quality downloads like FLAC and WAV then I won't be buying low quality MP3's.

I've also been reading about the iiNet vs. AFACT case (being an Australian usuer), and iiNet has actually used one of the laws of copyright in its defense. So then, how come these ISPs keep getting attacked, if they are in fact, using the law, to fight the law?

It defeats the whole purpose of the content distribution industries like Warner and Universal, if an internet service prodiver uses laws about distribution, or rather, facilitation of distribution, against these companies.

I also feel strongly about the Radiohead Project, that they have potentially made more profits as a Band, than as a signed artist group. Seperate to the recording industries, they made a potentiall 4.5million pounds. Even though each album was sold on an average of 4 pounds. But what does that tell us?

It tells us that fans are willing to support the artist, not the big companies like Warner etc. But these companies have yet to realise it. So insistent on their own profit that they remove most profit from the artist themselves so that the industry doesn't 'fail'.

Also, in regards to a previous comment, Universal was infact founded... using stolen equipment... If that were published, what kind of a rucus would that cause? How exactly would they be able to explain it? It undermines their whole 'philosophy' of copyright...

To sum up what I just said, copyright shouldn't be the restriction of copying, rather, the right to copy, share and distribute.