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IsoHunt targeted by MPAA

Published on 19th January 2007 by Wil Harris

IsoHunt is moving to Canada after a witch hunt by the MPAA.

Popular BitTorrent aggregator IsoHunt.com has been pulled offline by its ISP.

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.

17 Comments

Discuss in the forums Reply

mmorgue 19th January 2007, 15:19

Nice to hear the homeland (Canada) does have more user-friendly laws when it comes to copyrights than the US.

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....

MiNiMaL_FuSS 19th January 2007, 15:20

Good to hear ISOhunt will probably be getting an upgrade, always a handy site to find those few hard to find items.

DXR_13KE 19th January 2007, 15:22

all i can say is: LOL pwnd!!!

lets hope that the USA wont try to change laws in Canada by means of blackmail and sanctions.

CoolFox 19th January 2007, 15:47

I'm sure candada has more dirt on the US then the US has on Canada. Maybe my friendly neighbors to the north will knock some sense into the whole ordeal.

aggies11 19th January 2007, 15:57

It's only a matter of time before We (Canada) fall in line with these US regulations.

Our politicians are just as willing to sell their people, as the American ones are.

What Big Business wants, Big Business gets. :/

Aggies

Redbeaver 19th January 2007, 16:27

Canada kicks a$$!!! W00T!

ok, maybe for now lol but it aint gonna stay this long for sure....... eh? :p

randosome 19th January 2007, 17:27

well played RIAA, you have now just massivly advertised a torrent site, and failed in actually bringing it down - smooth move

On the upside, its good to hear they will be back online, its 1 of my favorite torrent sites, for legal content of course

Breach 19th January 2007, 18:21

Even if isoHunt died, torrent sites are like TIE fighters, for every 1 destroyed 1000 more pop up in its place.

Just another fruitless battle for RIAA.

It seems many of them are just leaving the country and their so called "authority"

mikeuk2004 19th January 2007, 18:57

darn i use them alot too. :( hurry up and get back into the action ISOHunt

mattthegamer463 20th January 2007, 04:03

Quote:

IsoHunt should be faster and bigger than ever when it gets back online, probably tomorrow

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.

Firehed 20th January 2007, 06:30

When did Steve Gibson say that bit about freedom of speech? I agree - in fact, I'm listening to SN episodes about content protection right now, and it's even worse than I'd realized.

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

[USRF]Obiwan 20th January 2007, 10:23

I watched the docu: "This movie is not yet rated" its a big eye opener on what the mpaa really is. In this case, it is about the ridiculous us age-rating system. But on the end of the documentary everything falls into place. And you can bind this to any other mpaa mafia interventions.

Firehed 20th January 2007, 11:35

Was that the one that received an NC17 rating mostly so theatres wouldn't show it anywhere? Never did find that anywhere...

[USRF]Obiwan 20th January 2007, 12:56

Yes but that was not the point. The point was that NC17 rating was only given when there was a "tit" showing. While any movie that chopped off limbs, heads flying, blow up people, headshots, multiple violant gunfights, blood all over the place and other gore stuff would be watcheble by children.

themax 20th January 2007, 19:06

I hope ISOhunt returns. I used them alot to find files I was looking for. I was a bit suprised to see the site down, but I was aware that they were being targeted by the MPAA (They had a news bit a while ago about the MPAA threatening action against them before).

sinizterguy 21st January 2007, 00:21

Good to know they will be back bigger, better and faster .... Isohunt is my preferred torrent search engine and almost always gets some good results.

TRG 21st January 2007, 15:04

Canada is often pushed around by the US. look at the softwood lumber ordeal, where the USA owes Canada a huge sum of money (I forget the number), and refuses to pay it. It is highly likely that laws here will catch up with the US, although DMCA is soo bad.