Anti-Piracy Caucus of Congressional International released a list of six websites that create copyright violation simple. This list includes the Canadian based website isoHunt and it immediately responded with the statement that isoHunt is presently a search-engine, like Google! What makes their claim to look slightly better than just a mock statement is that almost 90 percent of torrent related files that come up in response for a search, overlaps with the ones that come up in the search of Google.
But, such claims have been made in the past by websites like The PirateBay and these claims didn’t save them under the Swedish law. Moreover, isoHunt, unlike Google or YouTube, guided only the files of torrent. If you are unfamiliar with torrent files, I can give a quick explanation here. Torrent files are provided by certain hosts, which are used to download Copyrighted contents without proper authorization. These files contain the extension .torrent and can be used by client software to download the copyrighted contents easily. So isoHunt, which indexes only such files, fell under a tough scrutiny and last week, the judge issued a permanent injunction next to the isoHunt. The demands was that isoHunt must include pre-emptive filters for words like warez, jaybob etc. which are a few known piratical terms.
IsoHunts’s Justification
isoHunt however maintains a stand that it is just a search-engine and nothing more and that filtering certain words would make the search engine less effective and will allow for a lot of false outcomes. Ira Rothken (isoHunt’s attorney) says that, “We must allow for a robust search for the greater good”. Also they claim that certain small quantities of infringements are impossible to abolish as search is too essential for the society right now. They also claim that, the majority of people would not accept for the ultimate ban of all torrent files.
Legal Infringements
Another claim by isoHunt was that, unlike sites like the Pirate Bay, they respond to the take down requests each time, and those files or records or are stopped-up by the classification of their hash-values which are the matching copies that will be reserved out for a system of indexing in the near future. Federal court recognized this, but then the court found that isoHunt’s inducement of “Copyright Infringement” was the more important factor. These types of cases have also been seen in the past as well. IsoHunt is now forced to put into effect the similar limitations and is asked to filter words and specific numbers like “24”, “10” etc. But as stated earlier, Rothken claims this would not make a robust search engine and will results in a lot of false positive outcomes.
However, not much of these claims made much impact on the judge. But, Rothken said that the case has a great importance to the isoHunt and its founder. They also stated that they will appeal and follow this case in all possible courts. As to the injunction case, stay order is currently claimed by isoHunt and they plan to petition of case.
