Wednesday, January 17th 2007
ISP pulls the plug on isoHunt
Whilst the Pirate Bay is planning to buy its own country in an attempt to avoid the lawsuits, isoHunt is in a spot of trouble at the moment. Being one of the largest Torrenting sites, isoHunt has often come under the spotlight for its controversial activity, and after a fresh lawsuit from the music industry the site's ISP has decided to shut down the website without warning. isoHunt expects to be back online tomorrow, either by sorting the issues with its current ISP or by finding a new one. Despite Torrenting generally being seen as illegal, sites such as this have frequently argued that they are committing no crime because they do not host the files and Torrenting does have legal uses, but that doesn't stop the lawsuits.
Source:
The Inquirer
20 Comments on ISP pulls the plug on isoHunt
In your case I agree you should be able to use the music you own (I don't know whether this is legal, probably varies from country to country), but you have to admit most people don't use it for legal reasons.
Dutch laws on music for excample say we are free to download and copy CD's, however uploading music is still illegal. Which is rather odd since you can borrow your buddy your new CD and let him LEGALLY copy it. You can backup a movie but cannot go around any security measures to do so. Software is always a no go.
There isn't a clear law on P2P networks specifically.
Also, you don't OWN music, you only own a license so use it, which is totally different in court. As far as I know that counts in the USA as well. You can't download a game, if your disk is damaged you need to contact the manufacturer/store and you can get a replacement disk.
I do agree that it's rather pointless to fight it, the best way to counter it is to lower CD prices (they're outrageous) and make decent CDs. Just look at the average CD, sound quality is a joke, many are mixed to be cubicles (just open a CD in some sound editing program)
However, greed is human, so they won't learn.
Torrents are far from gone.
Downloading songs you personally own is legal in the US anyways. You can also copy all your own cd's just legally. It's under the right to backup your data laws. I only play copies of my cd's in my car, I actually did get harassed by a police officer about it one day also.
You can backup a movie but cannot go around any security measures to do so- This part is also actually law in the Us I believe, probably falls under copyright bull****, but its gray area, and a jury wouldn't convict anyone of doing this if they actually owned the movie.
A lot of the laws have gray area these days to make the big dogs happy and not totally screw over everyone else. They just flex a muscle with the gray area when they need to, to try to keep the law breakers from getting to up on everything.