IsoHunt Takes Down BitTorrent Trackers in the US
Written by Ernesto on September 25, 2007Starting today, the Isohunt team will deny access to all US visitors on their TorrentBox and Podtropolis tracker. They are forced to take this action because of their involvement in a lawsuit initiated by the MPAA.
The IsoHunt crew released this statement today:
As of earlier today, we have disabled access from users in the US to our trackers. This goes for ALL trackers (torrentbox, podtropolis) we run. This is due to the US’s hostility towards P2P technologies, and we feel with our current lawsuit brought by the MPAA, we can no longer ensure your security and privacy in the US. So, if you’re outside the US, you may notice less peers. We encourage you to add other public, unhampered trackers to torrents you post, in addition to Torrentbox and Podtropolis’s trackers.
IsoHunt is not alone in their battle with the MPAA. Last month TorrentSpy, another site named in the MPAA lawsuit blocked access to US users on their site. However, the takedown of IsoHunt’s trackers will have an even bigger effect on the BitTorrent community worldwide, especially because TorrentBox runs one of the biggest public BitTorrent trackers. As mentioned by the Isohunt team, this means that users outside the US will see less peers connected to their torrents which may result in slower download speeds.
The MPAA announced the lawsuit (PDF) against Torrentspy, Torrentbox and Isohunt in February 2006. Isohunt owner Gary later told TorrentFreak that they will not bow down to the MPAA. Isohunt hired a top-notch lawyer, specialized in Internet copyrights. It now seems that this wasn’t enough to keep the trackers in the air. For now, the websites are still available to US visitors.
The MPAA argues that the sole purpose of these BitTorrent trackers and sites is to share copyrighted content. But they are wrong according to Gary, who said, “We process copyright takedown requests daily, and have done so for hundreds of requests in the past, if not thousands. We work with all copyright owners, and even the RIAA email us routinely. The MPAA is the only organization unwilling to cooperate with us.”
Luckily, quite a lot of torrents are tracked by more that one tracker these days. And if that doesn’t work there’s always DHT. You can read more about how to protect yourself from failing BitTorrent trackers in this article. Long live the hydra!
To be continued. (Thanks Tom)
Thanks to one of our American associates showing this block in action right now
Previously: The 5 Most Popular BitTorrent Trackers
Next: Anti-Piracy Technology For Sale On eBay For $1m
125 Responses
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its time to fight back..kill all the people who tries to sensur the internet..
Hack all MPAA systems
Hey, I live in the US and yeah, the US are some whiny people trying to make a buck for sorry movies they present. They get angry because they charge a arm and a leg for useless movies they bring to the table and no one wants to pay for such rubbish.
Not everybody in the US are the bad guys, ok? So stop lashing out on the people who help people over seas seed their movies. I’m one of those people who do help those who moan and complain about nobody seeding. So from the US, you’re welcome for that.
Nice job changing the article title, too bad the url with the false info still exists. :P
Hilarious. This petty “my country” crap started becasue some idiot decided to blame an entire nation of people for the M*AA. Then he (and others) went on to say how they don’t upload to the US, and it didn’t matter to them anyway. If it doesn’t matter to you, then why start the fight you knew would happen? Because you just want to fight.
It would be better for you to just STFU and go about your “uploading only to cool Euro countries” policy. Americans, get your IP blockers tuned-up and remove Europe…
Oh, and one more thing. It looks like it was the CRIA (That’s the CANADIAN Recording Industry Association) that was responsible for the Demonoid downtime.
I guess the folks in Europe will have to simply block all IPs in North America now. Do I hear anyone whining about lazy Canadians not standing up to the CRIA? (awfully quiet out there).
[quote comment="173958"]> and started a civil war which caused the deaths of over a million people
You’re a stupid lapper of propaganda. Nowhere near that many people have died in Iraq — not by orders of magnitude — and you make it sound like the Killing Fields of Cambodia.[/quote]
According to the most recent reliable studies, it’s been over 1 million.
Isohunt bows down and sucks anti-pirate dick so fast, pathetic… MPAA will use them as a tool to fight the war, and theyre falling for it to avoid lawsuits.. if they cant handle the pressure then they need to get the fuck out of the water instead of being sharks themselves.
Digital Millennium Copyright Act (”DMCA”).
I guess it’s just another one of those things that happen. Prohibition
never stopped alcohol in the “Twenties.” It only made thing more interesting. Americans will refuse to and can only be sued for no more than the “ORIGINAL PRICE” of whatever they download. At most it can really only be a “COPYRIGHT INFRINGEMENT.”
Though many jurisdictions impose penalties for certain blatant acts of copyright infringement and may try to stop certain infringing imports at the border, copyright infringement is still mainly prosecuted through private lawsuits by the copyright holder or their exclusive licensees. When successful, these lawsuits will typically impose monetary damages against the infringer as well as injunctions against future infringing uses.
I am in the U.S. and the people who are of the age that use torrents are least likely to vote. It is SO fustrating because when you tell your friends to vote they say the politicians don’t speak to them. But of course they don’t speak to them because they don’t vote. I am in law school and still talk to friends going back to high school. Most don’t vote, even when you show them posts about how our rights are diminishing before our eyes, despite the fact that the judgments in these cases have a direct effect on them. Corporations have such a hold on our government and our politicians are useless. They act outraged infront of the camera over what is baseball players’ urine, but won’t standup to our moron president or the RIAA for that matter. A lot of people who live in the U.S. and are aware of what is going on do care but in my opinion we are totally outnumbered by those happy to watch tv until they pass out when they get home from work. As much as I am proud of certain aspects of my country’s history, I can see why the rest of the world thinks we are a bunch of lazy dolts. A lot of U.S. citizens grow up being told that the U.S. is the greatest and that our way of doing things is the only way. So many never question that, despite that some of the bad consequences for some of our actions/methods staring us in the face. Hell, I still can’t get over the fact that Bush was elected for a second term.
Mediadefender my ass..
You pirates pissed off some people and now you expect them to play along?
I find it kind of funny that this has turned into a war.. You punks never learn do ya? where is respect? where is etique? MD is nothing more then smoke and mirrors for people who want others to believe its the media that comes to get them. In truth, these guy have better things to do then waste their precious time with worthless user.
You want to share fine but stop trying to be little hitler trying to own people like their sheep. Come on we’re not stupid and we don’t like being controlled by the few. What different are you guys from these megacorporation? Why do these site need donation? So they wouldn’t be up and running w/out some kind of donation? So they are competing with money by providing a place to share files. Big Deal. So they too are making money, and if they aren’t they would not be up for more then 24hrs.
Who the hell would do a free service for nothing? The human is driven by mopney and greed. They will never change. P2P sole purpose was to do a free service but it has taken a wrong turn. I’m sorry but if something doesn’t benefit anyone why continue to do it? I may as well work for free and try to pay my rent out of nothing. Will that work?
[quote comment="173102"]I have a program that makes my ip look like it’s coming from Japan, or I can choose it to be anywhere in the world I want to. These programs are SUPER EASY to use… would these work as a work around because it’s not showing you’re from the US? if so, than NOTHING is happening to Bittorrent traffic at all.[/quote]
Which one do you program do you recomend? Have you tried it? Thanks!
Try “Anonymizer Anonymous Surfing” followed up with “PeerGuardian .”
Or do this:Set you LAN, and them :
echo “Ip Masque lance…”
echo “1″ >> /proc/sys/net/ipv4/ip_forward
echo >> /etc/issue
/sbin/ipfwadm -F -p deny
/sbin/ipfwadm -F -a m -S 192.168.1.0/24 -D 0.0.0.0/0
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_cuseeme
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_ftp
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_irc
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_quake
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_raudio
/sbin/modprobe ip_masq_vdolive
Ummm and other “STUFF” to Masquerade your IP. But this can cause a KERNEL COMPILE ERRORS. You are probably better of using commercial software unless you are an “IT” geek…lol
money by providing a place to share files. Big Deal. So they too are making money, and if they aren’t they would not be up for more then 24hrs.
Who the hell would do a free service for nothing? The human is driven by mopney and greed. They will never change. P2P sole purpose was to do a free service but it has taken a wrong turn. I’m sorry but if something doesn’t benefit anyone why continue to do it? I may as well work for free and try to pay my rent out of nothing. Will that work?[/quote]
I agree, if these free torrent site companies were paying out of their own pocket for server space, connection speeds, and moreover php programmers to build them sites.. they surely wouldnt have enough money left over to hire “top-knotch” lawyers.. everyone is out to get theres.. as p2p downloaders.. were out to get free shit.. plain and simple.. the providers of that free shit they are getting kickbacks from advertising.. and the **AA are getting nothing.. well boohoo.. last time I checked box office records are staggering. They wont be squeezing my tit anymore. they can run out every torrent site they want but there is one constant in all of this. when you build a lock, someone will pick it. where I sit. all this cyber babble is in vane. not one of you have any say so and probably not one of you with half a brain cell will be shut out from the free media.. so why point fingers and say shut out americans? or americans why point the finger and say fuck you?
very infantile indeed. things are the way they are.. nobody cares
then does anyone here know how to bypass or circumvent these sh1tty bans? i liked torrentspy, until their so-called-head banned the u.s., and now isohunt? does anyone here know how to write a program or know one that can circuvent this sh1t?
is that Switzerland or Sweden
this has been on the cards for a while now, if the US wasn’t wrapped up in other countries affairs, they would’ve seen this coming.
the bottom line is that this isnt about to get better, in fact this leaves the MPAA to start going for the smaller minnow p2p sites and pressuring them to follow suit, using not only lawsuits, but the actions of isohunt and others as a precedent to which they will now be intent on making the others follow.
For american’s there is a lesson here, do not vote for presidents who only want to flex their military muscles, but who actually have a brain in their heads. Whats with the “land of the free” when you have to be a millionaire to be president in the US with a multi-million dollar campaign to stay in the competition? thats not democracy people!
for the MPAA, this is the best thing they could hope for, they have now effectively shut a fair percentage of the US torrent market down, the average american would have no more than a bit torrent program and isohunt in their favourites list.
the MPAA have no direct duristiction over other countries (despite their arrogance to the contrary) but they have been putting pressure on the governments in Europe and Canada and Australia, to bring in anti-piracy laws to include torrent downloading.
Thankfully, the legislation has not been developed to a stage where it is illegal to download torrents (which the mpaa would have us all believe).
With the blocking of the US from certain trackers and sites, the MPAA now have a smaller barrel of fish to shoot into in the US, so for the US torrent user, its not looking good for you.
since your president and his cabinet appear to be in the pockets of the MPAA, then it envitably comes back to the american joe for putting the seeds there to start this ball rolling…
for one i didnt vote for this fucktard of a president, but did that keep him from becoming the president , no
i am american and i loath almost everything about it, and i hate to be hated by others just cause i was born and live in the USA.
to all of those people that dont like me cause i live in the USA can suck my nut and die for all i care, you dont respect me i wont respect you. simple as that.
i dont have a problem with the people that like me no matter where i live.
all of this i am better then you attitude is a bunch of bullshit, you are obviously no better then anyone else, people who think like this are so closed minded its pathetic. its people like this that deserve nothing in life cause they dont know what respect means.
why cant we all just get together and fight this as one. fighting with each other isnt going to do anything except just make things worse.
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