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IsoHunt targeted by MPAA
Author: Wil HarrisPublished: 19th January 2007
IsoHunt is moving to Canada after a witch hunt by the MPAA.
The ISP reacted to a DMCA request by American film outfit the MPAA, apparently without bothering to check any details of the DMCA request with the site itself. Lackeys, much?
IsoHunt maintains that its service is legal. No copyrighted material is hosted on the site, which only indexes torrents, the content of which is obviously distributed by users themselves.
In the meantime, the guys at the site are doing their best to get back up. They're moving the site infrastructure to Canada, to avoid further problems with the long arm of the US law (the DMCA only applies in the US) and are taking the opportunity to upgrade the hardware while they're at it, so IsoHunt should be faster and bigger than ever when it gets back online, probably tomorrow.
Steve Gibson, security expert extraordinaire, is fond of saying that freedom of speech requires that copyright be unenforceable, since any mandatory copyright enforcement will inherently limit that freedom, if indirectly. The unpleasant side-effect of absolute freedom of speech and unenforceable copyright is piracy, making piracy a fact of life in a world balanced towards freedoms.
At the moment, it seems like the US is falling more on the side of copyright - unsurprising, given the amount of lobbying money going into government from big content firms. However, the rest of the world can thank Canada and Sweden for having laws that fall a little more in our favour.
What are your thoughts on IsoHunt, freedom of speech and piracy? Let us know your thoughts over in the forums.
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Comments (17)
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But I fear it's only a matter of time before the US leans northward and attempts to enforce it's own pervert copyright ideals on Canada. Be it politically or through some other economic fashion that barely conceals it as blackmail....
lets hope that the USA wont try to change laws in Canada by means of blackmail and sanctions.
Our politicians are just as willing to sell their people, as the American ones are.
What Big Business wants, Big Business gets. :/
Aggies
ok, maybe for now lol but it aint gonna stay this long for sure....... eh? :p
On the upside, its good to hear they will be back online, its 1 of my favorite torrent sites, for legal content of course
Just another fruitless battle for RIAA.
It seems many of them are just leaving the country and their so called "authority"
Ha, its like a hydra, cut off one head and two grow back. The US should realize they can't solve this problem with fancy lawsuits. Even if every country in the world cracked down in a worldwide bid against piracy, pirates have showed they will just create their own countries like Sealand.
As to IsoHunt, hope they pull a PirateBay. Of course, for the undeniably legal torrents they have, not the ones that are still completely legal but the files they link to being questionable, of course :p