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
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125 Responses
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like Ernesto said; it won’t stop US users getting to the files.. same as it won’t keep us from viewing HBO/Showtime outside the US.
It’s a lost cause guys..
In Johnny 5 words: Need More Input.
Ahh its great to NOT live in the USA.
I believe that this was isoHunts decision, not the MPAA’s., despite how you wish to word your headline. I’d gladly give up US peers if it means that I’m less likey to be sending or recieving shit from the likes of the late Media Defender or Media Sentry. There is more to this world the what America thinks, and we still have the rest of the world to seed to and leech from. Personaly I think good on them, screw the US and their world police mentality. Its about time more sites started doing the same. Perhaps then the lazy bastards in the US might decide enough is enough and stand up against the MAFIAA, rather than bitching because the rest of the world doesnt want anything to do with them. Boohoo for you.
well, badnews, it was brought on my the MPAAs suit, it was hastened by the torrentspy decision (for the MPAA). If those two actions by the MPAA hadn’t gone ahead, would this have happened? No, therefore it’s directly attributable to the MPAA and its actions.
however, it doesn’t really do anything, since DHT still works.
If that were the case they would have done it when the lawsuit was first innitiated. Contrary to the headline, their trackers were not brought down by the MPAA. But your right in so far as if it were not for them this would not have happened. That does not however mean thet isoHunt was forced by the MPAA to cut off the US, as the healines would suggest. As for your DHT, perhaps people should start conciously banning US peers from their clients as I do.
thing is Ben Jones, that means the people in the USA lose out because they let the orgs like the MPAA flourish. Hopefully these actions will provoke the peopel to make mroe of a stand. Word up to Badnews :)
Apathy of the people in the USA to stand up for their rights as the Swedish people have for TPB helps to cause them to be on the banned IP lists of more and more sites.
Badnews, nice to see someone that thinks for themselves, creds to you dude.
Yes their are ways around IP blocks, I think a lot of newbies would have problems working it out, just their questions of how to play winrar point out a lot of peoples lack of technical expertise.
I support the Admins of these sites in their blocks. Until the citizens of the US, get off their asses and do something to show their government they want true net neutrality.
As the one to bring this story to Ernesto (read: “Thanks Tom”), I pretty much need to comment. The fact is that US citizens don’t care. We believe that “no one will listen” because “there aren’t enough of us.” Unfortunately, if every single person who thought that would get up from their keyboard, we could make change. Make the politicians accountable, and hold the fucking MAFIA accountable for their actions.
This is all too true Tom, and its also something that dogs other areas, like elections - 3rd parties don’t get votes, because people don’t hear about them, and those that do think their vote is wasted, so the parties get few votes, and people go ‘yes we were right’ and at the same time they deny federal funding, and in other cases additional benefits, because of the need to be in the crowd, and support the winner. This is why we in the Pirate Party are having such a hard time gaining all the support we know is out there.
Andrew Norton
Pirate Party of the US
http://pirate-party.us
it is tough for the American public and you have my deepest understanding. i caution you to keep the faith and as Gary says seek alternative trackers. eventually all will become even
it is not ok what is happening in the USA. but there is plenty upside. market forces are such that consumers who are currently buying services on the secondary market of isohunt, torrentspy, thepiratebay, cannot possibly accept an **AA taxed source. as any tracker operator will tell you there is no cash in the market, at best you can build a large community that attracts a fanbase of supporters who keep it alive or the critical logistic level to host exposure advertising and delivers funding
keep it at the fore the people bittorrent serves are those who normally seek the services of a library: the students, the researchers, the young, the children, the old, the pensioners, the disenfranchised, the lame, the invalid, the war-wounded, the browsers, the try-before-you-buy, and importantly, those outside of the dollar/euro economic zones
it was always the objective of the **AA to remove the free public tracker from the arena, to establish its own segmented tiered market model taxing downloads by anyone and everyone. America give your support to the free trackers, the **AA model cannot give you what you need. you need you dollars to feed, cloth, educate your children
Props to Tom for making this article more publicized. It is true there aren’t enough Americans standing up to the MPAA, but such things require lots of money, as the media companies and record labels have plenty to squander on fighting their battles. As for people outside the US, remember that what you are downloading in the first place is mostly American (US) media, and if it wasn’t for this country you wouldn’t have it in the first place. Boo to you and all your snobbery.
i just cancelled my blockbuster online account. chose other and wrote “the mpaa sucks”
maybe if more people would do this.
I feel compelled to speak out here against Badnews. Why would you ban US peers, your just slowing down your speed by doing this. It may just be me, but normally the vast majority of people I connect to are located in America. Though I’m not sure I’m pretty positive that the MPAA/RIAA don’t send cease and desist letters to foreign downloaders, then again I may be wrong but I see the actions by ISOhunt simply as protection for their user and there’s plenty of other torrent sites out there so no big deal.
Ok, so the next question is what do we in the US need to set in our Azureus/uTorrent/etc so we can proxy for tracker info, but not for actual data transmittal with peers… Seems like that’s the way we’ll have to go… If the clients don’t have that option yet, time for someone to write it a plugin to do so…
I’m in Europe. I see absolutely no difference in speeds for the very little ammount I download via bittorrent. What I upload on the otherhand accounts for far more traffic, and i choose not to upload to the Unites States as much as possible. Who the **AA’s send their scare mail is of little personal consiquence to me directly, but by reducing the possibility that my uploads will be tainted by peers I upload to directly, I feel I’m do my bit to keep targeted torrents from quickly getting into the hands of the likes of Media Defender, by uploading to peers from countries that are less likely to be collecting data that they can corrupt. As long as there is a good seedbase there is little that anti-p2p can do to disrupt a good swarm. You may think thats its not a big deal, but I think uploaders will migrate to sites they know are safe, or are at least safer, and that is a good thing for the users of those sites.
To panther: not everyone cares about US media, namely TV shows, as that is really the only thing that the US offers P2P in a timely fashion. Movies and games will continue to be released around the world, if not before, certainly not long after the US. Most new games and movies that hit bittorrent do not originate from the US anyway, so I doubt there will be much impact there.
Why go to isohunt? Its just crap there as long as we can get movies from axxo and piratebay. Badbob48 I’m glad I do live in the US.
isoHunt is an indexing site. Any crap you find there is other sites crap, and has to more with what those sites allow to be posted. But then I suppose you’d be the type to winge about only getting 1 in 10 relevent search results from Google too. I might also add the Adso uploads his aXXo releases to TorrentBox, which is an isoHunt site.
[quote comment="172705"]Why go to isohunt? Its just crap there as long as we can get movies from axxo and piratebay. Badbob48 I’m glad I do live in the US.[/quote]
You know that axxo does a lot of his release from torrentbox don’t you? One of the trackers who have blocked the USA. But whatever. Yeah I enjoy about 10/100 movies the USA makes, the rest are crap. Thats why downloading is cool in my eyes.
isoHunt also run Torrentbox, Podtopolis and Ed2k.
Great news! let them block the light of sharing from US nation so ppl in the dark can get a beautiful morning.
IM IN THE USA AND I SAY FUCK THE MPAA FOREVER
To the people in the that say they don’t need indexing trackers like Isohunt, Torrentbox, and Torrentspy -
from the US or otherwise -
What happens when US peers get blocked by the Pirate Bay, BTJunkie, Bushtorrents, Mininova, AnimeYume, Boxtorrents and other trackers huh? Where will it end? I know I’d be pissed if Demonoid blocked US peers tomorrow. Start thinking about the whole Bittorrent community instead of just yourselfs.
I don’t see how this is bad news. Sounds more like a step forward. Maybe this will encourage other trackers to move their servers outside the U.S., and thus deter the problem altogether. And if the RIAA/MPAA wants to go around bullying other countries, well… that’s just going to look bad on them.
[..] there’s always DHT [..]
As long as the private flag isn’t set by some morons for public torrents…
And a tip to make torrent faster and more stable (ie againt false data from malicious peers): don’t use piece sizes above 256KiB!
- Breeze
Welp I guess everyone is going to start using piratebay.org because that site will never get shut down its in Sweden :)
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