MPAA Files Lawsuits Targeting Major Torrent Sites
“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 G. Malcolm, Executive Vice President 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.”In all, nine indexing sites have been targeted (Isohunt.com, BTHub.com and TorrentBox.com all owned by one individual.) BitTorrent: ISOHunt, TorrentSpy, NiteShadow.com, BTHub.com and TorrentBox.com; eDonkey2000: Ed2k-It.com; Newsgroups: NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net.
The operators of these indexing sites appear surprised at the MPAA’s decision to sue, as they have yet to receive any notification.
“Funny, they didn't email me,” Gary from ISOHunt said. “I'm not too concerned because we deal with copyright requests everyday, some of them from studios MPAA represents.”
“Justin” from TorrentSpy echoed Gary’s skepticism. “I guess I will learn more when I see what they have filed exactly. [I’m] not sure why they are suing when we comply with DMCA requests but I guess we will learn more down the road.”
A point to consider is TorrentSpy and ISOHunt are search engines - not trackers. Their role in the BitTorrent community is considerably different from previous lawsuit recipients such as the trackers EliteTorrents and LokiTorrent.
Trackers are responsible for directing the traffic of the BitTorrent community by hosting the actual torrent file. Conversely, indexing sites operate in a fashion similar to Google or Yahoo! and only search a tracker's database. They host no actual torrent files. Fred Von Lohmann, staff attorney for the EFF (Electronic Frontier Foundation), told News.com no court has ruled on the legality of this issue.
posted by Agent 1138 @ 1:58 PM
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