ISOHunt MPAA Letter
Check out the following letter between ISOhunt and the MPAA (via BoingBoing):
Mr. Oppenheimm,
On Wed, 19 Jan 2005 10:12:13 -0500, Oppenheim, Matthew J wrote:
Dear Mr. Fung:
We are writing to follow up on our prior correspondence. As you know by now, we have filed suits against a number of significant BitTorrent operators. We continue this correspondence in the hope that we might resolve matters with you such that litigation is unnecessary.
This is such an obvious intimidation tactic that I’m glad ISOhunt doesn’t fall for it. “We’ve sued others… now we’ll sue you…” is not a friendly overture, and smacks of desperation.
Yes we are aware of your lawsuits. Despite the fact that I don’t live in the US and the laws MPAA follows does not apply here, it is our intention to cooperate in resolving issues you have, in a reasonable fashion.
As we have said repeatedly, a significant amount of copyright infringement is occurring as a result of your website and tracker. Apart from the knowledge you have by virtue of your day to day operation of the site and server, we have put you on notice that the infringement is occurring. The list of representative works that was attached to our notice letter was merely a sample of the infringement occurring on your site. We have requested that you stop the infringing conduct immediately. That you have automated the process of adding torrents to your website is not a defense. You have the ability to review torrents before posting them. You also have the ability to search your website and review the torrents that are already being distributed. There should be little doubt, for example, that “Ocean’s Twelve” which is a torrent offered on your site is copyrighted and should not be distributed. A copyright holder is not obliged to monitor all the websites and the servers around the world to police and protect each and every work from those who would choose to close their eyes to ongoing infringement. It is incumbent on you to distribute only those torrents that correspond to files that you know are authorized to be distributed.
You repeatedly mention the “representative” list of works, which serves only to intimidate us as a search service. If you look at the Betamax vs. Universal case, the VCR was not deemed illegal since it is capable of legal use. isohunt.com is a content agnostic search service on indexing torrent links over the net, which is very much capable of legal use. While as a service we can filter content, and that is exactly how we cooperate by filtering identified copyrighted titles, we do not have the man power to manually verify the tens of thousands of torrent links, nor is it even technically possible without a complete list of copyrighted works to filter against. Since you seem to have trouble producing a complete list, a technical difficulty I can understand, you should also understand the same difficulty we have in making your copyrighted works magically disappear… somehow. So instead of calling it a complete list, which seems unfeasible, it should be referred to as a sufficient list. Without it, we cannot help you in filtering your works in our search results.
Although you have suggested that you would like us to provide an index of copyrighted works to which you can refer regarding the torrents on your website, we simply do not find it credible that you are unable to identify as copyrighted material the many popular motion picture titles currently referenced on your website. To the extent you need further guidance, the United States Copyright Office maintains records of every motion picture and television program in the United States that has a copyright registration. Additionally, on-line databases provide information regarding who distributes motion pictures and television programs. You are already aware of at least one such source, the website imdb.com, to which you provide your users deep-links for motion pictures.
Read above. According to normal procedures of DMCA takedown, it is your responsibility to identify what maybe infringing your copyright, and then we will comply. Your notion that we should know every title MPAA owns, while you have difficulty producing such yourself, is absurd. Links to websites such as imdb.com is user submitted, while torrent links may be user submitted or indexed from other sources on the internet. We do not moderate this process, we don’t have the resource to do so and it is not our policy.
This reply is genius. I love the argument. Because the MPAA cannot produce a list of copyright works that it “owns,” ISOhunt cannot filter their search results. Because ISOhunt is automated, it can’t manually filter, by policy choice. This is quite clever, until the MPAA does produce a masterlist…
Finally, it continues to appear to be true that you have addressed the infringement of which we have put you on notice. Indeed, you have not removed those torrents that we specifically gave you notice. Your response that you should not have to undertake any action to address the ongoing infringement until we have agreed to the “arrangement” you have offered is not acceptable. You have an obligation to address the ongoing infringement. You may not offer less protection than we have a right to expect, and then condition that lesser protection on our agreeing that you should have to do nothing more.
The MPAA lawyers want immediate action and a precedent for future actions. ISOhunt wants a policy for removing copyright works, which it will then apply uniformly. Doesn’t the latter seem more sane?
It is not an arrangement, it is information necessary for us to cooperate. Unless filtering against your “representative” list is sufficient, which we then can use to filter to your satisfaction, please provide us with a list that is sufficient.
–
Cheers,
Gary
isoHunt.com
What will happen next? Who knows, but the ongoing squabble with the MPAA lawyers is beginning to become heated.
| This entry was posted on Saturday, January 22nd, 2005 at 4:59 pm and is tagged with intimidation tactic, mpaa letter, isohunt, ocean s twelve, representative works, copyright infringement, oppenheim, dear mr, torrents, desperation, lawsuits, virtue, correspondence, litigation, intention, jan 2005, torrent, suits, doubt, servers. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
109 Responses to “ISOHunt MPAA Letter”
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ok … first of all..
INFORMATION SHOULD NOT BE SOLD..
EVERYTHING THAT CAN BE COPIED SHOULD NOT BE SOLD..
YOU CANNOT TRADE ENERGY FOR INFORMATION AND MONEY IS ENERGY
ok now that I got that off my mind.. mpaa is OWNED by the jews as is the ENTIRE MOTION PICTURE INDUSTRY so.. dont be fooled.. and dont let them tell you otherwise.. just see for yourself http://www.jewwatch.com/jew-controlledpress-6-jewish-companies-96-percent-of-all-media.html
Anyone that rationalizes copyright infringement as acceptable is a fool. It’s like arguing that it’s legal for Robin Hood to steal from the rich and give to the poor. It’s still illegal. Thank you.
(next thing I’m going to hear people argue that it’s okay to cheat on their taxes because they need the money for rent)
what country are you in that does not fall under the mpaa? canada? if so does canada not have some one to send out
or is everything in canada like there army
Update, Jan. 16, 2007
Lawyers from our primary ISP decided to pull our plug without any advance notice, as of 14:45 PST. No doubt related to our lawsuit brought by the MPAA, but we don’t have more information at this time until people responsible comes to work tomorrow. We will be back in operation once we sort out this mess with our current ISP, or we get new hardware ready at our new ISP.
Sit back and enjoy the rest of the internet in the mean time, while it last. For your torrent searching needs, try Google for now by searching for "SEARCH TERMS ext:torrent".
You can also come hang around our IRC channel (SSL on port +7000). We’ll update on this page and on IRC when we have more information.
If you wish to help us out financially, you can donate via Paypal from the button below. Due to prior dis-taste from certain individuals misusing legal funds for their own purposes however, this is not a legal defense fund. Your donations will be used for the operational costs of our servers and development of our websites. You have our sincere thanks.
Oh … and be good to ya mother …
**** the MPAA, the RIAA and anyone else that attempts to attack the people.
Between 75% and 85% of all music, cinema and TV is absolute stinking ****. It should be flushed down the toilet of bad history never to rear it’s ugly head. The 15% to 25% of good to superb of the above deserves some sort of praise.
Example. I’ve been a torrent-hound for years. I’ve downloaded so much **** that my PC ******* died once from torrent-intoxication. The ******* thing was drunk on torrents. I killed my PC. However, I’m one that can say that when I download something that is, in my opinion, true art, like say The Lord of the Rings Trilogy, I will actually go out and buy the extended box set, which yes, is sitting proudly in my loungeroom. It cost a ******* fortune but you know what, **** it! That’s my way of saying thanks to Peter Jackson and all the actors and contributors to that Trilogy for giving me hours and entertainment and food for my imagination.
When people start getting serious about making good music, cinema and TV, then I’ll "consider" uninstalling Bit Torrent and Bit Comet.
Until then, get fucked!
Long Live ISOHUNT.com, Long Live the Information Revolution
the technology to download copyrighted material has been around for 25 years now and i don’t see any starving artists walking the streets yet! Are we to believe that mel gibson is hurting from people dl’ing passion of the christ???Half a billion and counting …How much money do the producers of films need exactly??? Maybe if it didn’t cost me $100 to take my famliy to the theatre i would feel sympathy but the fact remains that the large corporations have gouged the consumer for the last 50 years and now it is thier turn to Be gouged,I say how do you like it???? We also forget that 80% of the world population does not have telephones or internet so they are still forced to be at the mercy of corporate giants like sony. Besides how many times have music companies and movie producers been sued themselves for copyright infringement for stealing other peoples ideas or art????? Who is calling the kettle black now????
I feel that the mpaa is just trying to finally block all the bootlegged movies out there, even though we have been bootlegging movies since Colecovision was out. I say that Isohunt should fight it out. the mpaa is bitching about why isohunt doesn’t block its movies, when isohunt doesn’t have a complete list to block off certain titles that my or may not yet be available for transfer. As far as I see it Isohunt has been complying, its the mpaa that doesn’t want to move it’s lazy *** to get a thourough list of its titles. They simply don’t want to go through the trouble…or they don’t feel obligated to do it. Personally, I say that they deserve to have their movies bootlegged…if they don’t want to cooperate with Isohunt, then it is just for their precious movies to be transferred to a million homes and then be burned on 10 million dvd-r’s.
The one thing people are missing about musical artists is that they don’t get paid to make CDs. When a band signs a record deal the record company lends the band the money required to make the album. This money is paid back by profits from the CDs. Sometimes it can take releasing numerous albums to even pay off the first album. With actors, say Tom Cruise, he gets paid to make a movie, up front. Of course, the big pay out can be when artists get more coverage from the internet and people actually go see them live (unless of course they download the bootleg instead).