Orders site to filter “terms that are widely associated with copyright infringement (for example ‘warez,’ ‘Axxo,’ or ‘Jaybob’),” forcing the site to follows in the footsteps of TorrentSpy, MiniNova, and other defunct BitTorrent tracker sites targeted by copyright holders.
It’s shaping up to be another day of mourning for the BitTorrent community with news that isoHunt, one of the largest and longest running BitTorrent tracker sites on the Internet alongside The Pirate Bay and MiniNova, will have to remove torrents that link to copyrighted material.
“We’re discussing the mechanics, the process that is reasonable for an injunction,” Gary Fung, who runs the site, told Wired. “We’re still trying to hope that the judge will do the right thing.”
In a previous ruling on the case from last December, US District Judge Stephen V. Wilson referred to the site as “old wine in a new bottle,” finding that isoHunt infringed copyright and intentionally encouraged piracy, and that the “evidence of defendants’ intent to induce infringement is overwhelming and beyond reasonable dispute.”
Since then the court has been considering a remedy to the problem, and it appears that a permanent injunction “to restrain further infringement of Plaintiffs’ copyrights” is what it’s decided.
Judge Wilson says it’s highly unlikely isoHunt could ever fully compensate the MPAA for the infringements its been responsible for, and so a permanent injunction is the “only realistic method,” especially since he’s observed that more than 95% of all torrent trackers on Fung’s sites (isoHunt, Torrentbox, ed2k-it, Podtropolis) link to “works that are infringing or at least highly likely to be infringing.”
So to fix the problem he wants Fung to not only remove torrent trackers that link to copyrighted material, but also wants him to filter “infringement-related terms” from the site.
Infringement-related terms include means both the “titles or commonly understood names of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works” as well as those “terms that are widely associated with copyright infringement (for example ‘warez,’ ‘Axxo,’ or ‘Jaybob’)”
As for what the ruling will ultimately mean for visitors depends on where you live. It clearly states that the “injunction only covers acts of infringement that take place in the United States.” With that in mind it’s highly likely Fung will simply start blocking US visitors, a remedy which he should have opted for long ago. Heaven knows it’s easy enough to circumvent and he could’ve saved himself a lot of heartache.
I've been interested in P2P since the early, high-flying days of Napster and KaZaA. I believe that analog copyright laws are ill-suited to the digital age, and that art and culture shouldn't be subject to the whims of international entertainment industry conglomerates. Twitter | Google Plus
