More torrent sites under the spotlight

Written by Tim Smalley

February 24, 2006 | 09:55

Tags: #distribution #edonkey #index #mpaa #piracy #search #torrent #torrentspy #tracker

Companies: #isohunt

The MPAA has filed a total of seven lawsuits against highly trafficked Torrent, eDonkey and Newsgroup websites that are responsible for distributing copyrighted material between millions of users around the world.

TorrentSpy and ISO Hunt are the two big names mentioned in the MPAAs announcement. Other large torrent sites targetted include BTHub, Torrent Box and NiteShadow, along with Ed2k-It - a leading eDonkey hub with over 46,000 registered members. There were three large Newsgroup websites mentioned too: NZB-Zone, BinNews and DVDRs.

"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 Malcolm, Executive VP 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."

We understand that TorrentSpy and ISOHunt are both torrent search engines, meaning that they simply index a collection of tracker databases and don't host torrent files themselves. This could prove to be a stumbling block for the MPAA to overcome when building a case against the two distribution hubs, as there haven't been any cases to determine whether providing an indexing service by itself is an infringement of copyright.

Slyck.com had the chance to talk to representatives from ISOHunt and TorrentSpy. Both sites remained skeptical about the possible action that the MPAA can take against them, but were surprised because they'd not received the complaint before it was made public.

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