BC File Sharing website ISOHUNT to pay Hollywood 110 Million

Vancouver’s Gary Fung built isoHunt.com 10 years ago, when he was still an engineering student. It soon became one of the top places to find links to torrent files on the Internet. Not long after that, the lawsuits came.
The Motion Picture Association of America and the Canadian Recording Industry Association filed copyright violation suits against Fung, and he spent the next seven years fighting them in court. His argument was predicated on the fact that he was not distributing copyrighted material, merely providing a search tool where people could find links to torrents of all kinds, illicit and legitimate (but mostly illicit). If that makes him guilty, argued Fung, then so is Google, since you can use their engine to find torrent files

BC File Sharing website ISOHUNT to pay Hollywood 110 Million

I was a member that broke the news of Megaupload getting tanked, awhile ago. We also remember Pirate Bay and the operators legal troubles.... Now, a perhaps lessor player in the field of torrents has been taken down (legally) which means it will likely come down online soon to follow.

I think Pirate Bay was one of the only ones who managed to stay up after their legal troubles, flip flopping servers around the world.

Don't get me wrong, I pay for my media, but I get frustrated with distribution. I see these operations more as a sign of the failure by media producers and distributors, trying to wrangle exclusive rights and pump crap into marketing/sales channels, which breeds the need for this kind of thing.

So, I'd say it's a sad day for anyone that used this service, or remembers it. I believe it was a site that searched out a dozen or so torrent sites.

I agree with the founder, Google, same thing. Completely stretching here in the eyes of the law. They can't do the dirty work of tracking down each place a torrent comes from? Tough. Maybe cause police don't actually know how to do investigative work, just take down witness testimony after threatening someone else with a charge.

Where's a good Sherlock Holmes when you need one?

Ah yes, you don't, when you have the MPAA backing you...

reply to post by boncho


It's a sad day when a corporation dictates the law to a nation...oh wait...I missed that day decades ago?

You know I would agree with you on this but...

Some people use torrents to try things out before they buy them.. movies games prgms whatever... In some cases they end up buying them if they are good or just using the idea as a hobbie..

Above referring to programs and such.. I downloaded 3ds max and ended up just using it to try and mod a car into GTA III back in the day learned more about it and because really good at it and stopped.. Never used it again... unfortunately because I had a lot of skill in it..

Also back in the day I downloaded 2 creed cd's and ended up buying them because they were good.. I ended up giving Another band 200 bucks for the cd's I downloaded personally(Yes fairly well known.)

Games today........ This is a catch 22...

Take the game GTA V for instance.. when they were selling it it was supposed to be the best thing since sex in binary form... But if you look at it.. it is riddled with problems and such.. I would say when they released the game it is probably 60% done cause of all the problems.. If i spent 60 90 ot 140 bucks on this game and got such a bad time playing it I would have been pissed...

End of story don't give a crap product and people wouldn't have to resort to borrowing your crap to see if its worth their money...

Seems to me Fung gave the internet police one of the best tools they could have possibly had.
Just use his site to find the illicit torrent uploaders.
It's like giving a cop a doughnut only to have them sue you for making them fat.

I am sickened by the nazi's running this world. I wouldn't be paynig darth vader a penny.

Funny thing that none of these copyright trolls dare to go after YT or google. Shows that they're just after money and care nothing about piracy.

PsykoOps
Funny thing that none of these copyright trolls dare to go after YT or google. Shows that they're just after money and care nothing about piracy.

Absolutely, well said. They go after the ones they think can't afford to fight back.

reply to post by ThichHeaded

End of story don't give a crap product and people wouldn't have to resort to borrowing your crap to see if its worth their money...

Careful now! You're going to give them ideas and little Johnny down the street who lends out his Minecraft game to his friend to play will be getting sued.

I agree 100% with you.

If they stopped putting out crap, people would stop downloading. Most cd's are 90% junk and they should do what Radiohead did. If it is good, people will pay to support them.

reply to post by superman2012


Fill me in on what Radiohead did.. I am not sure...

The thing with games like minecraft, I bought it when it was in beta.. I knew going in it was going to be crap(In all honesty it wasn't) so I know it was going to be a crap game cause it wasn't finished..


GTA V on the other hand was supposed to be a 100% finished game, they hyped the hell out of it and people still do not get anything they promised.. So if someone steals this game well its because the game sucked anyway..

I don't download anything at all I don't download music because it all sucks now.. I listen to underground stuff which most of the time is free and the artists can give a crap less what you do..

Programs, well I don't download those anymore because I have gotten lazy over the yrs compared to when GTA III was out.. And the programs You have to pay 3500 bucks for(Cost of 3ds max in my above post) and another 1500 for the renderer you can find free alternatives online.. Blender for example... Photoshop you can get Gimp. So the way I see it you can get free open source things that are better than the actual ones..

::EDIT::

I don't watch movies they all suck today... and TV I don't watch, only thing on tv i need to know about is weather and the internet usually provides me with that.

sayzaar
Absolutely, well said. They go after the ones they think can't afford to fight back.

They go after people who are small enough to not be able to fight back but big enough to pay "damages". There's a good reason why they claim that one movie is worth like an arm and a leg.
[Edit to add] It's not necessarily the movie producers. The "copyright troll industry" is huge. It's not only whole law firms but also tons of technology for drm etc. The sad part is that if they'd do digital distriputions without drm's and other nonsense the actual movie producers would probably make a ton of more money.

reply to post by ThichHeaded


Sure. Here ya go.

They made their album free to download with an option to donate if you enjoyed it. It was successful and the band made more money for themselves this way. I think it is a good way to discourage an album that is 75% crap.

isohunt is not down...

It's ridiculous. They said if they even had a judgement of 1.1 million it would put him under. This guy wasn't making any money off of this.

The copywright folk need to take a step back and look at the RESEARCH.

That's just for music, but there are many more that show the same results for the entertainment industry at large.

~Tenth

If it wasn't for the piracy, the entertainment industry would not have seen a dime from me in the last ten years. I buy what I have already sampled, and deemed to be worthy of my money. Probably 95% gets sampled, then binned never to be seen again. But there have been a few gems I went out and bought. One of the more "pricey" ones has been zbrush, but in reality with the free upgrades they been giving to former customers, it has paid for itself since really.

I love isohunt.. They are just a search site.. They don't have any uploads.. So they were sued just because they pointed you to where you can download?

tothetenthpower
isohunt is not down...

It's ridiculous. They said if they even had a judgement of 1.1 million it would put him under. This guy wasn't making any money off of this.

The copywright folk need to take a step back and look at the RESEARCH.

That's just for music, but there are many more that show the same results for the entertainment industry at large.

~Tenth

I have downloaded a movie that I otherwise wouldn't even pay $2.99 to rent that introduced me to a smaller production company that had style. Now I buy their stuff.

TKDRL
If it wasn't for the piracy, the entertainment industry would not have seen a dime from me in the last ten years. I buy what I have already sampled, and deemed to be worthy of my money. Probably 95% gets sampled, then binned never to be seen again. But there have been a few gems I went out and bought. One of the more "pricey" ones has been zbrush, but in reality with the free upgrades they been giving to former customers, it has paid for itself since really.

I agree with you 100%. It makes me sick how petty and greedy those pigs are! I would never have discovered my like for Within Temptation and Lindsey Stirling were it not for youtube.....as a result I have purchased every CD released by Within Temptation completing my collection by purchasing their OOP first album last week for 40 bucks. I just spent another 40 on a signed copy of Lindsey Stirling's deluxe edition debut album. If anything the net result of these media sources on me has been the purchase of music I never would have discovered otherwise.

IMO if they didn't try pushing the latest crap from American Idol and such on people (i.e. forcing singers and bands with zero talent down our throat) the amount of people downloading would be a lot less. Nobody likes spending money on something that is awful and then 3 weeks later not being able to get $2 for it at yard sale.

Meh, they can't get blood from a stone. So the guy will owe them $100 million for the rest of his life... no such thing as debtors prison anymore, so good luck trying to collect your winnings boys.

Pfft.


Fact:
There are more people than there are media corporations. The more these corporations jump up and down on their soapboxes taking down the little guy, the more people will fight back in rebellion.

When Isohunt goes down, 5 new ones will crop up.



The only way these multi-billion dollar fat cats can win this fight is if they shut down the internet all together... and that ain't gonna happen.

i think it is insane that fines are this severe.
fortunately for me, my moral compass does not allow me to worry about piracy.

i dont see the point of 'sampling' something for free and then legally buying it. i mean if you already have it.......

i know not everyone agrees with me but we all live by our own standards. people say 'theft is theft' but imo, there are varying degrees.
i would never walk into a store and take a physical copy of something and walk out without paying. 'digital copies' though. well i feel differently about that.

i have always felt like if best buy has 10 copies of a movie on the shelf and someone takes one, then of course they are left with 9. they are out something tangible. it is not the same with digital copies. if best buy has 10 copies and a million people download it, they still have 10 copies. they didnt lose anything.

i dont buy the whole 'well those are copies they would have sold' business either.

all these big movie and tech companies are in bed together anyway. i think it is a big scam.
its no different than people making mix tapes from the radio or taping something of hbo with a blank vhs or hooking up 2 vcr's.
i mean do these companies that put out ripping/burning/compressing software and blank dvd's and such really think that people are just making home movies? i think not

its been a racket for a long time.

you can go out and buy some new comp with a sick graphics card, blue ray/dvd burner, crazy storage space and such.... they know what it is for.

boncho

Vancouver’s Gary Fung built isoHunt.com 10 years ago, when he was still an engineering student. It soon became one of the top places to find links to torrent files on the Internet. Not long after that, the lawsuits came.
The Motion Picture Association of America and the Canadian Recording Industry Association filed copyright violation suits against Fung, and he spent the next seven years fighting them in court. His argument was predicated on the fact that he was not distributing copyrighted material, merely providing a search tool where people could find links to torrents of all kinds, illicit and legitimate (but mostly illicit). If that makes him guilty, argued Fung, then so is Google, since you can use their engine to find torrent files

BC File Sharing website ISOHUNT to pay Hollywood 110 Million

I was a member that broke the news of Megaupload getting tanked, awhile ago. We also remember Pirate Bay and the operators legal troubles.... Now, a perhaps lessor player in the field of torrents has been taken down (legally) which means it will likely come down online soon to follow.

I think Pirate Bay was one of the only ones who managed to stay up after their legal troubles, flip flopping servers around the world.

Don't get me wrong, I pay for my media, but I get frustrated with distribution. I see these operations more as a sign of the failure by media producers and distributors, trying to wrangle exclusive rights and pump crap into marketing/sales channels, which breeds the need for this kind of thing.

So, I'd say it's a sad day for anyone that used this service, or remembers it. I believe it was a site that searched out a dozen or so torrent sites.

I agree with the founder, Google, same thing. Completely stretching here in the eyes of the law. They can't do the dirty work of tracking down each place a torrent comes from? Tough. Maybe cause police don't actually know how to do investigative work, just take down witness testimony after threatening someone else with a charge.

Where's a good Sherlock Holmes when you need one?

Ah yes, you don't, when you have the MPAA backing you...

One day someone will setup in one of those island countries that do not care what the greedy money grubbers and corporate tycoons want. I am a free worlder, a few of you old timers know what that means.

Be serious, you put music out on the air it's gone. If I buy an album you want me to pay again to put it on my mp3 player, or pay cus i want to back up a movie. You want my wife to buy the book I already paid for before she reads it too.

Greed, money, I wish I could ride out into space at near the speed of light and come back in ten years, which would be a thousand years on earth. That is probably the only way I would be able to see a society that has grown beyond the need for money and selfish things like greed.

I believe we are capable of it, you have to believe. It was not meant to be this way folks. We are pathetic. Music and the arts should be a gift to the people. Not something you own. Give me a break. Literally everything is about money and life and this universe is so much more than that.

I am sorry folks I am not saying people should not be paid, I think we have just gone crazy, crazy.....

The Bot

reply to post by CardiffGiant


It's quite simple. If a band puts out good music, I want them to continue putting out good music. They will not do so if they are not making money, so I invest money into them somehow. If they have a way to make direct donations, I go that route, if I am able to, go see their live shows they play in my area. Same for movies, software, prettymuch anything. I want people that put out good stuff to make money, I want people that put out crap to go broke, and go away.