Copyright lawsuit update and introducing isoHunt Lite (Beta)

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:39 am

US Copyright Laws

The US court ruled, in late December 2009, in Summary Judgment that we were liable for secondary copyright infringement, you may have read about it in the news. What you have not heard however is what happened since the status conference in January. The Judge, at the status conference, agreed to provide us after the injunction phase, but before the damages phase, with an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before we appeal however, we must undergo injunction motions and that's what we are doing now. Plaintiffs have filed their motion with their proposed measure for injunction a couple of weeks ago. The Plaintiffs proposed injunction and its keyword type filter, in our view, raises serious issues on the balance between freedom of speech, fair use and copyright protectionism. Such keyword filter is also impossible to implement if it's to have any sort of precision, nor can it avoid conflict with fair use cases, free commerce, or extra-territorial law. We have just filed our response in opposition:

http://isohunt.com/img/legal/Fung%20Inj%20Opp&Dec-FINALSTAMPED-noexhibits.pdf

isoHunt Lite

We are in the process of developing isoHunt Lite, a lighter, simpler, and faster version of isoHunt, and need user testing and bug reports for our beta version to iron out the bugs. Should the Court accept a version of isoHunt Lite during the injunction phase, it may become the required interface for our US users. Currently the isoHunt lite beta is a work in progress. You can preview the beta now, and whether you are from the US or not, we welcome your bug reports on the new isoHunt Lite:

http://isohunt.com/lite/

A reason for isoHunt Lite is that we propose it as a measure for injunction, as it no longer contains any red flags for inducement that were found at Summary Judgment. And without inducement, an important question with wide ramifications we can then ask is, when does a content agnostic search engine that specializes in a vertical like the BitTorrent ecosystem be ineligible for the DMCA Safe Harbors, an information location tool like isoHunt that has both non-infringing and infringing uses? When non-infringing uses in the ecosystem is growing, exemplified by the latest independent success stories like in Ink?

We will have an injunction hearing on March 22. Our appeal will follow after that, stay tuned.

UPDATE (after hearing): Despite rumors that we are ordered to keyword filter for US, there's only a proposed order, no actual order. Freedom of speech, non-infringing use and technical implementability issues are still being debated.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 5:34 am

WOW, the lite version is very very lite indeed, like it the minimal way it is, super fast loading, but what it needs for sure is the ability to sort search results by seeds/peers and most important by comments/thanks, otherwise it is just like any other torrent search engine. Perhaps also the ability to add comments or at least to add a thanks/thumbs up/down would be good.

Then I tested out the report torrent function and that is very neat as well and I can understand how that would work within US laws. The whole modal window with the various options for reporting torrents that infringe on copyright is well done as well. I like how you explain that you are a search engine and not a torrent hosting site, that is very important as most people might not understand this fact of the difference between the two or they don't want to make the effort to understand it for the sake of having the torrent removed full stop.

It is also good that you include Goodle, Yahoo, Bing, TPB, Torrentz and BTJunkie in the report form so that people can see that other big players are out there also just indexing or even hosting torrents. Very good move there!

Don't know if that would be ok considering what you wrote about the US copyright laws and a measure for injunction. But being able to sort search results by relevance or by user popularity should not harm any laws. I mean how much further will they try and push this, it really is a fight they cannot win but that is a whole different topic.

All in all the Lite version is awesome considering the copyright case you are undergoing at the moment.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 6:31 am

The lite version is definitely lite. It feels more like I just did a hash check. It's very similar to google. I'm not sure I would prefer it over what Isohunt is today but if us in the United States have to go to that, I guess there isn't another option.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 7:01 am

IH Admin, Dev, Janitor,all I can say is keep up the good fight.
I think the lite version whilst light is a very usable and sustainable alternative.
I think more along the lines of VLC and Handbrake. Neither break the law as they share open source libraries. I think that should the IH lite version be adopted there are plenty of very smart and good open source programmers that would add help items and add ons tht would bring IH back to the level of usage that it enjoys right now. Firefox and its add ons would be a good example of application and service software additions.
Whatever happens IH is the best and lite will be adopted if no other route is available.

EDIT: INK is a great example. I posted a link to Jaybob a couple of months ago about it and in the meantime I personally own the bluray version..... HUH bluray from an independant that the mega labels refused to show in their cinemas as they decided it was a bad investment. Long Live P2P.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 7:09 am

Keep up the good work IH, dont let them b'stards grind you down

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 8:57 am

It truely is sad how willing americans will throw away freedoms for worthless things like money, or the illusion of safety.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 9:06 am

spiral_fishcake wrote:

It truely is sad how willing americans will throw away freedoms for worthless things like money, or the illusion of safety.

i agrees

i don't like isohunt/lite
i did some preliminary searches and compared the results to those on IH
results=same when sorted by isoHunt rank and no time limit,
but no comments, nor rating still makes those results a crap shoot
it will be a sad day if US IH members must resort to IH/lite
besides the comments and forums are indispensable(ty spell check)
i spend more time in IH forums than anywhere else online

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 10:37 am

the site has always been a great source for anything as for as a torrent index goes and i dont see the liability you hold in that index when its a user to user based system. whether people communicate stolen material through an underground network of post-it notes or through a donation and ad supported index like yours, i dont see the difference. its still going to happen and its not the fault of those who facilitate the technology. if that were the case the information companies would be taking a fall too, but we all can clearly see that is not the case at hand. its quite frankly a mockery to our legal system and i wish you the best of luck against them. when it comes down to it, i think you know the american market behind your site will vanish with anything lacking content. im assured there are people standing up against this type of blatant oversight to proper law here. i can only hope that if you lose the case that it doesnt set a precedent and destroy an enormous and valuable scene. take them to the last logical argument on every point and dont miss a detail or you could be a pawn to the american corporate overlord! ha. seriously, i wish you the best of luck.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 12:26 pm

CycleSlut wrote:

It is also good that you include Goodle, Yahoo, Bing, TPB, Torrentz and BTJunkie in the report form so that people can see that other big players are out there

I disagree. Being from the US, we are facing the authorities closing in from all directions, blocking access to content such as torrent reference and search sites. Of course I'm upset that I may not be able to access the real isohunt anymore, I've used it extensively since its inception. But that doesn't mean they should point out the other sites to the authorities. This is basically saying: these are the remaining important websites, if you take us down, take down btjunkie as well. F* that. We need to build firewalls rather than showing their weaknesses.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:11 pm

bsonnega wrote:

CycleSlut wrote:

It is also good that you include Goodle, Yahoo, Bing, TPB, Torrentz and BTJunkie in the report form so that people can see that other big players are out there

I disagree. Being from the US, we are facing the authorities closing in from all directions, blocking access to content such as torrent reference and search sites. Of course I'm upset that I may not be able to access the real isohunt anymore, I've used it extensively since its inception. But that doesn't mean they should point out the other sites to the authorities. This is basically saying: these are the remaining important websites, if you take us down, take down btjunkie as well. F* that. We need to build firewalls rather than showing their weaknesses.

You see if you are worried about IsoHunt closing down in the US you can still use Google and type "filetype:torrent" just behind what you search for and it will only present you with .torrent search results. What that means is that IsoHunt is not a torrent site but a search site that merely indexes torrents like other search engines would index webpages.

And that is where the freedom kicks in, NOONE should tell anyone what to look/search for and how to present the search results. Why limit IsoHunt when Google and other services are doing it all the time already? I say go after the big players first before you go after the others. The day there are no results on Google when I search for e.g. "The Big Lebowski filetype:torrent" IsoHunt will be in serious danger, BUT until that day I will come here every day and contribute my ass off, because I believe in freedom of information.

You see making money with information is a big game and I don't see how one service should benefit from it all the way where others have to shut up and watch and hey don't forget IsoHunt lives with ad impressions and user donations whereas the other services have a whole legion of fund resources to fall back onto.

That is not right and all of us know it and that is why we are all here contributing and making IsoHunt what it is today.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:19 pm

Guys you are missing the point, its not about taking anyone down or anything like that.
Its just making Isohunt into a legal format that complies with the court order in the US. Read the links.
Also just because Isohunt Lite shows results from other torrent sites doesnt mean it is trying to indicate them.
Its doing the same as Isohunt but in a raw form. Google does exactly the same thing if you search for a torrent.

Honestly people stop trying to look for motives that dont exist Rolling Eyes

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:28 pm

Noone will ever take Google down, Yahoo will perhaps take itself down at some point (fingers crossed) and the others I have no idea about and don't want to give judgement.

I was merely trying to somehow illustrate to bsonnega how operating a search engine for pages and content online should not be limited by laws no matter what the content of those pages might be.

Limiting search engines and search results or actually telling search engines what to show to people and what not to show to people is like a fascist regime only handing out those history books to children in school that conform with the regime's ideas. And we all know where that ends..

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 2:34 pm

pacino23 wrote:

Guys you are missing the point, its not about taking anyone down or anything like that.
Its just making Isohunt into a legal format that complies with the court order in the US. Read the links.

I agree, its about legality and not censorship.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:04 pm

Perhaps I don't understand how making IsoHunt legal in the US without censorship will work out. What is the "report torrent" function for then? Is that not censorship of some type, is that not limiting IsoHunt in a way and why is it called Lite then if there are no major cuts to it?

Then again I always had a hard time understanding how the US and especially their laws work. I think it goes hand in hand but hey that is not what this is about.

I just hope there won't be major cuts to the main site and I somehow like the approach of preparing the US users to the Lite version in order to keep the core untouched. Well done, nice move.

Posted: Tue Feb 23, 2010 3:49 pm

File sharing is not illegal in any country. If a judge rules that it is, or that a filesharing website or software is, he/she is on dangerous ground.

It is not illegal to buy a DVD and lend it to your friends. It is not illegal to make backup or copies of purchased copyright material, I refer to iTunes that backs up all your software and MP3s as well as Nero and other software.

Sharing your backups with "friends" therefore would also not be illegal, lending the backup could be seen as a way of safeguarding the original.

What would be construded as illegal is if you or two of your "friends" were watching the same movie or using the same bit of software at the same time as to do this would require two licenses. THIS IS ILLEGAL

Burden of proof should therefore lie with the Plaintiff to proove that two copies have been used or viewed at the same time, which we all know is impossible.

If courts continue to rule as they are, the movie and music industry would be able to prosecute you for lending the music/video or even letting a friend view or listen to them.