“This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak at the time.

IsoHunt has asked the court to decide whether .torrent files, and BitTorrent search engines in particular, are infringing copyright or not. In other words, should BitTorrent search engines be held liable for the .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data? If so, what does this mean for other search engines, and sites such as YouTube?

Today, isoHunt and the CRIA appeared in court. While isoHunt asked the court to rule that they do not break any laws, the CRIA is demanding a full trial against the BitTorrent site.

This landmark case might be the one to define how files can be distributed online. Among other things, isoHunt argues that they are just a search engine, like Google, and that they have no control over the files they find elsewhere on the web. In court today, they showed that a filetype:torrent search for Coldplay on Google returns plenty of torrent files, similar to a search on isoHunt.

All isoHunt does is index other BitTorrent trackers and indexers, without human intervention. The files that can be found on isoHunt are scattered all over the Internet, and even these files are just metadata.

IsoHunt founder Gary Fung told TorrentFreak that the judge converted their petition into action at the end of today’s hearing. “He just thinks the issues are too complicated and consequences far reaching legally and technically, and a full trial is more appropriate for discovering all documents,” Gary said.

“The important issue is not about the complexity or ramifications of our case which we won’t dispute, but rather CRIA liking to use full action and discovery because it’s costly for all parties and the court and was exactly why we decided to bring our petition first for efficiency before they were going to sue with an action,” Gary told TorrentFreak in a response. IsoHunt is likely to appeal the order for conversion.

To be continued.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

In May 2008, isoHunt received a Cease and Desist letter from the CRIA, in which they demanded that isoHunt founder Gary Fung should take the site offline. If Fung didn’t comply, the CRIA said it would pursue legal action, and demand $20,000 for each sound recording the site has infringed.

A similar tactic worked against Demonoid, but the isoHunt founder didn’t back down so easily. “We have since tried to come to an understanding, but just as with the MPAA in the US, they ignored our offers of cooperation by the take down of .torrent links to their content files, so long as they provide sufficient identification,” Gary Fung told TorrentFreak.

Fung has pointed out that, like most other BitTorrent sites, isoHunt has a Copyright Policy, and takes down .torrent files when they receive an appropriate request. The CRIA simply ignored this, even though they have sent correct takedown notices to isoHunt before (and isoHunt complied), and continued to threaten with legal action.

As an act of self-defense, isoHunt has decided to sue the CRIA instead, and today Fung will file a petition (pdf) to ask the Court of British Columbia to confirm that isoHunt –and sister sites Torrentbox and Podtropolis– do not infringe copyright. “This is our preemptive strike with a narrowly defined petition for Declaratory Relief that we do not infringe, in anticipation they are going to file their own lawsuit that we do infringe (their copyright),” Fung told TorrentFreak.

“Our petition summarizes BitTorrent technology, its open nature and a whole ecosystem of websites and operators that has developed around it, that CRIA does not own copyright to all files distributed over BitTorrent or on isoHunt websites, and we seek legal validation that we can continue to innovate within this emerging BitTorrent ecosystem on the Internet.”

“Think of this as a follow up to the QuebecTorrent case,” Fung says. “We intend to take this all the way up to the Canadian Supreme Court unless CRIA settles with us out of court in any reasonable way,” Fung added.

This is the first case worldwide where a court will be asked to decide whether .torrent files, and BitTorrent search engines in particular, are infringing copyright or not. Among other things, isoHunt argues that they are just a search engine, like Google, and that they have no control over the files they find elsewhere on the web. The site is indexing other BitTorrent trackers and indexers, without human intervention, and allows its users to find content that is scattered across the web.

So, should BitTorrent search engines be held liable for the .torrent files that might point to copyrighted data? If so, what does this mean for other search engines, and sites such as YouTube? This landmark case might be the one to define how files can be distributed online, let’s hope the Court of British Columbia will make the right decision.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Targeted in 2007, they faced the combined resources of the CRIA, ADISQ and APFTQ (the TV and movie companies) – and CIRPA. In all, 31 organizations went after QuebecTorrent, demanding $200,000 in punitive damages.

They ordered that the admin, Sébastien Brûlotte, aka ‘Doditz’, should close the site and never again engage in any similar activity, and post a message clearly indicating the closure of the site. At the time, Doditz didn’t comply. The full details of the case are available in an interview we conducted back in January.

However, the pressure became too great and on July 9th QuebecTorrent was forced to close after it received a permanent injunction from the Superior Court of Quebec. The judgment reads:

ORDER the defendants Sébastien Brûlotte and Quebectorrent.com inc., their officers, administrators, employees, representatives, mandator as well as any person acting directly or indirectly on their behalf or according to their instructions, as well as to any person informed of the present injunction to immediately close the torrents on these website Quebectorrent and to refrain from being involved in any website using the bittorrent technology, peer to peer, or any other technology allowing the download of any work protected by copyright.

QuebecTorrents had indicated all along that they intended to fight the recording industry but in the end, their combined resources proved to be too much. Solange Drouin, the managing director of ADISQ explains:

“We had envisaged three days of lawsuit, but they indicated last week to us that they would comply with the demands. In return, we agreed to drop the claim for $200,000 in damages brought against the site and its administrator.”

Indicating that she hopes the shutdown has an effect on other current and potential torrent site admins he goes on: “We waited to see the result of this first lawsuit. We hope that this result will have a dissuasive effect. If it is not the case, it is possible that we will engage in actions against similar sites.”

Doditz briefly told TorrentFreak: “I just wanna say thanks to all the people who supported the cause and me all along.”

This post will be updated shortly with an exclusive message to the BitTorrent community from Doditz.

Stay tuned.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

These sort of problem – when users in one geographical location can access a site when others can’t – is usually down to DNS issues which generally resolve themselves in a short time. However, in the case of Demonoid, this doesn’t appear to offer the answer.

According to reports we’ve received, when users from the Netherlands try to access Demonoid all they get is a blank white page. However, should they try to access the site using a proxy or VPN making the visitor appear they are not from the Netherlands, the user can now gain access. The block happens on all the major ISPs, and are persistent.

Canadians, having been previously blocked, remain unblocked, presumably after Demonoid fell out of range of the CRIA. However, more recently reports indicate that not only are Dutch users blocked from Demonoid, but in an unlikely scenario, Brazilians appear to be blocked too. So what could be at the bottom of this?

There could be some purely technical issues with the web, but as time goes on, this seems less and less likely. It is of course possible that Demonoid itself has some technical problems, having reported that the site had a few bugs to be ironed out around 9 days ago or so. If this is the case, there will be lots of relieved people around.

It’s also possible that there is a legal angle to these blocks, after all this type of action by Demonoid isn’t new in its quest to stay within the law. Around 12 months ago Demonoid blocked Dutch users for a while, as the pressure from BREIN increased quietly behind the scenes, and then later on very publicly blocked millions of Canadians following pressure from the CRIA, only to unblock them again after moving to ’safer’ Ukraine-based hosting.

But, if Ukraine is ’safe’ as a host country, why block the Netherlands, and why block Brazil of all places? As it turns out there is a Demonoid/Brazil link, in that the Demonoid.com domain has a protected WHOIS provided by the Brazilian-based Neurocube.com, which in turn is hosted in the Netherlands at Demonoid’s old host, LeaseWeb. And of course, Netherlands-based anti-piracy group BREIN aren’t the biggest supporters of Demonoid either – and have lots of resources – but whether or not they still hold anything over the site in order to force a block of an entire country is a matter of speculation.

In the absence of any announcement from the new admin of Demonoid (which seems incredibly unlikely), it’s some users of Demonoid who asked us to find out why they can’t access the site. Unfortunately, we don’t have the answer for them right now, maybe they will become more clear in the future.

In the meantime, please keep us updated in the comments with access reports from your country and we’ll try to keep people updated on the position for Dutch and Brazilian Demonoid fans. If you can or cannot access Demonoid, we’d like to hear from you.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

They specifically demand that the Moxie Colo stops hosting top ranked torrent sites What.cd, SumoTorrent, BTMon and FullDls. Generally, the CRIA is demanding that Moxie stop hosting all torrent sites.

TorrentFreak has been reporting recently on the plight of QuebecTorrent which is currently tied up in a legal battle against the music industry in Canada. Clearly that – and the running out of town of Demonoid – was just a run up to further action by an emboldened CRIA.

In files served on Moxie Communications Inc (the parent company of Moxie Colo), the CRIA is demanding that Moxie turn over the personal details of the torrent site administrators, presumably so they can go after them. The CRIA also want Moxie to turn over all relevant site logs, but it is at least unlikely that the Canadian police will be interested in most of the users.

Of course, just because the CRIA demands something, doesn’t mean they will get it. For now, Moxie Colo said it won’t be giving in to the CRIA’s demands.

Sean Corbin, CEO of Moxie Communications told TorrentFreak: “We will not be following the request and will be fighting for the rights of our clients as to date laws in Canada protect them. We have looked into the matter and from what we understand these sites are not breaking any laws in Canada. If we do not comply they might bring legal action against Moxie Communications, as they believe without us these sites could not do what they do so therefore we are as bad as they are.”

More on this breaking story as we get it.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

The legal background to the case is available in TorrentFreak’s previous interview with QuebecTorrent back in November 2007. Essentially, it’s felt that the decision in this case will impact the future of all Canadian BitTorrent trackers and have more serious implications, explained here by Micheal Geist:

This case is one worth watching – while the knee jerk reaction of some will be to call for the site’s immediate takedown, the legal principles that come from the case, including the liability for linking to unauthorized content and the responsibility of site owners for content posted by 3rd parties, could have significant implications for search engines, bloggers, and anyone else operating online.

TorrentFreak recently caught up with the admin, Doditz, and he told us: “First of all I had to change my lawyer because he got sick and can’t represent me anymore. The new lawyer is Sébastien Leblond and his team at Fetch Légal LTÉE.”

Doditz told us that the next big dates are the 9th, 10th and 11th July, where there will be a summary analysis of the case taking place in the Court of Justice in Montréal.

In an announcement to QuebecTorrent’s 85,000 members he said:

The eventual hearing will require adequate preparation, which will require active involvement of our lawyers in the next three months. Notably, this will require our defense, which will rest particularly on account of the jurisprudence involved with the subject, and the actual evaluation of the law.

Doditz says he will personally have to participate in this process and added that it’s possible that some of the site’s users could be asked to testify too.

Of course, with all this talk of legal action, talk of lots of expenses can’t be far away either. Indeed, the fear of increasing legal costs is often enough to make someone cave in to the demands of the media industry, and they know this all too well.

Nevertheless, QuebecTorrent is standing up and fighting. Doditz hopes that given the wider implications of a negative outcome in the case – such as those indicated by Michael Geist – this will enable him to raise the funds needed for an adequate defense and sensible outcome. He estimates they will need “approximately $15,000, plus applicable taxes, so about $5000 per month”.

A final message from Doditz: “Thank you in advance to all those who will allow QuebecTorrent to defend your rights and the exchange of international culture.”

Anyone wishing to help the cause, can do so by clicking here.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

It’s been just over 6 weeks since the CRIA allegedly shut down the Demonoid BitTorrent tracker. Details were scarce at the time, with lots of people simply claiming the site had some technical or server issues. Indeed, TorrentFreak came in for quite some criticism when we claimed the CRIA was involved, but when the site returned there were some ominous signs which seemed to support our claims.

Eventually, the Demonoid trackers reappeared, followed by the site itself but was forced to block Canadian visitors by the CRIA. However, despite blocking Canadians, it seems the CRIA hasn’t yet had enough of harassing Demonoid and its host.

On Demonoid.com we now read:

“The CRIA threatened the company renting the servers to us, and because of this it is not possible to keep the site online. Sorry for the inconvenience and thanks for your understanding.”

Indeed, Demonoid’s host had previously said that if it had any major hassle, it was likely it could pull the plug on the site.

A message on the Demonoid IRC channel says: “Site is down, tracker is up. Expect the site to return, unless we hear otherwise from Deimos.”

Canada seems to becoming more unfriendly for BitTorrent sites – Demonoid aren’t the only ones being threatened by the recording labels there.

Developing story

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

I have been an avid music collector for many years, and have approximately 1000 CD’s in my collection, not counting albums that I have purchased over the internet and own only digital copies of. I purchase approximately 30-40 new CDs per year. However, thanks to your recent decision to block Canadian users from accessing Demonoid, I have decided that I cannot continue to support this backwards, dysfunctional industry with my money any longer, and as such, I do not plan on purchasing music ever again if it means that one penny goes to your organization.

I listen to heavy metal music, a form of music that “the industry” stopped supporting many years ago, so I have a hard time feeling any sympathy. Sites such as Demonoid have done far more to promote the music I love than your organization or the industry in general has ever done. I can find out about new artists and new releases from artists that are never promoted. I can listen to music from artists that have never been played on the radio, will never be shown on MuchMusic or MTV, and never have a review or even mention of their new album written about in the local newspaper. From listening to this music, I can make an informed decision if I wish to purchase the album or not, as I am not going to gamble $15-20 on something that I haven’t heard anything off of before.

25 years ago, I primarily learned about music from friends who dubbed a copy onto a cassette tape, where I could listen to it and make a decision if I wanted to buy the tape for myself. Now, many years removed from school, my “gang” of friends to share music with has shifted from cassette tapes and the school cafeteria to sharing mp3’s online. I listen to some things that I don’t like, and consequently, I don’t buy those albums. What I do like, I buy, or at least I used to, before your decision intended to stop me from hearing new music.

The industry cries that record sales are down, and blames this all on internet downloading. I won’t be so naïve as to say that internet downloading has no impact on the sales. Downloading has certainly stopped me from making the stupid purchases where I heard one single that I liked and bought an entire album only to find out that the rest of the songs are crap, and the CD sits collecting dust on my shelf. But for every CD that I didn’t buy based on those premises, there are 2 or 3 other CDs that I did buy because I heard of them for the first time on a site like Demonoid.

In the meantime, the music industry itself needs to recognize that they are to blame for sagging record sales. For years, they have been marketing recycled crap, and people are getting tired of it. On the odd occasion that something fresh and new accidentally slips through and gets radio play, the music industry immediately signs a seemingly infinite number of clone bands that makes the “new, fresh” sound boring almost instantly. It seems the music industry doesn’t even care about making or promoting good music any more. Instead, they market a young, pretty face that can dance provocatively and lip-synch well, and push this on the radio stations to play while getting the tabloids to print large pictures of their breasts. If bands like AC/DC or Motorhead were to emerge today, they would never be successful; not because of poor record sales due to downloading, but due to the fact that they’re ugly so the record company wouldn’t promote them, if they picked them up at all. In the meantime, they’re falling all over themselves to promote Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, or any teenage tramp that can be airbrushed to look sexy.

The record labels cry about downloading cutting into the profits of the sales of albums. They put out “greatest hits” albums by 20-year olds with 2 or 3 albums under their belts, released with one new track to try and sucker the fans that already have both albums into spending another $20 for one new song, or re-releasing a 3-month old album with a “previously unreleased bonus track”. Then they can’t understand why people aren’t buying them, and cry foul that people are downloading the one new song instead.

I know not only the record companies are crying. Artists that have been around long enough to have enough clout to get a cut of the record sales are concerned about their cut, like Metallica that also clamor that “downloading is evil”, and then go on to sell over 9 million copies of their last album instead of 9.1 million. Boo hoo. Meanwhile, many younger, smaller artists favor downloading, because they know it’s the only way that people will get to hear the music and in turn come out to see their shows, because the record label sure as hell isn’t promoting them. But they can’t say that out loud, can they? If they do, guess which band is going to get dropped by the label?

So tell me, what does the CRIA do to promote metal? Oh, right, you’ve got a link to the top 50 “metal” albums in Canada, which after a quick glance at the top ten this week includes punk acts like Dropkick Murphys, Finger Eleven, and Billy Talent, and rock acts like Nickelback and Queen, but very little that resembles heavy metal. (Perhaps you should ask the Celtic punk band, Dropkick Murphys, what they think of being labeled as “metal”.)

And also tell me, without Demonoid, where would I have found out about bands like Evile or Dublin Death Patrol and made a decision to purchase their album online (because no record store that I have found in Canada carries either one). And god forbid the CRIA would care about the promotion of Canadian talent, such as longtime recording artist Annihilator, which released one of the better albums of 2007. However, I have yet to see their new album sold in any store in Canada, including HMV’s flagship store on Yonge Street in Toronto, and I ultimately had to buy a copy from a UK website. Considering the only place I had heard about this album was having downloaded it from Demonoid, do you really expect anyone to make this kind of effort to buy an album without ever having heard it?

The record labels and CRIA have gone to great lengths to tell us that downloading and sharing music is killing the music industry. Open your eyes and you will see that the music industry dinosaur has already been killing itself for years, and by resisting technology rather than embracing it and using it to their advantage. “Oh, but they have,” you try to insist, pointing to the sites devoted to selling music in mp3 format online. I notice that most of the metal bands I am interested in are still not available through these services. I also notice that buying an entire album ends up costing as much, if not more, than if I went to buy it in the store, even though there are no longer costs of materials or shipping that have to be paid for, and once again, I fail to come up with any sympathy for the music industry. I hope the music industry does die, because I know that music itself will not die so with the corrupt aspects of the industry gone, only then might music once again flourish.

Sincerely,

A former music buyer

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

We received a letter from a lawyer representing the CRIA, they were threatening with legal action and we need to start blocking Canadian traffic because of this. Thanks for your understanding, and sorry for any inconvenience.

This confirms our earlier reports this week, and show that the CRIA was indeed responsible for the downtime. It’s been a controversial week and at times emotions were running really high. In the absence of any official announcement it was really hard to separate fact from fiction, with rumor and counter-rumor.

The bad news of course is that Demonoid is now unavailable to Canadians. Unfortunately it is not the fist time an anti-piracy organization effectively shuts down access to a part of the BitTorrent community. Earlier this week Isohunt had to ban US users from its trackers, and last month TorrentSpy blocked access to US users, both by pressure from the MPAA.

At the time we write this article, the forums are still offline, but it probably wont take long before these are back online too. The first sign of Demonoid’s return came yesterday when the trackers started responding again.

When an avalanche of upset Demonoid users came to TorrentFreak this week, the mood was grim when not only their site disappeared but also doubts were cast on our report. We aim to be a credible news source and understand the responsibility we have in the BitTorrent community. While understanding how Demonoid’s Canadian users must be feeling right now, it’s great that we now get the chance to share in the relief of the majority of Demonoid’s dedicated userbase.

The second most popular BitTorrent tracker on planet earth has returned, that’s the most important thing.

Update: Demonoid is having some problems again, this message now appears: “The latest changes to the site are giving us some problems – We’ll be back soon”

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

TorrentFreak contacted some of the Demonoid administrators, but they are not sure what happened either. It is certainly possible that Demonoid’s Canadian ISP pulled the plug after being pressured by the CRIA. The ISP said before that they would take it down if they would receive complaints.

Right now, the Demonoid server is still pinging, but the ISP could have firewalled the everything after they received some serious legal threats. Deimos, the founder and the head admin of the site is unreachable and has not responded yet.

This is not the first time Demonoid suffers major downtime due to pressure from the anti-piracy lobby. Demonoid had to move its servers from The Netherlands to Canada in June after The Dutch anti-piracy outfit BREIN filed a subpoena against Demonoid’s ISP. BREIN had asked the ISP to take Demonoid offline and hand over the administrator’s personal details, but Demonoid relocated their servers before any harm was done.

Unfortunately, it now seems that Canada is not the “safe haven” as they expected it to be. It is likely that Demonoid has to relocate again, for the second time in three months.

Demonoid tracks over a million .torrent files and is the second largest BitTorrent tracker after The Pirate Bay. The shutdown of the site and tracker is a huge blow for the BitTorrent community that lost 2 of the most popular BitTorrent trackers (TorrentBox was taken offline for US users a few hours ago) within 24 hours.

More info soon!

Update: Still no response from Deimos, the CRIA or Demonoid’s ISP.

Update: The CRIA and Demonoid’s ISP refuse to comment to the allegations, they don’t confirm or deny anything.

Update: The tracker is back online.

Update: Demonoid Returns, Forced to Block Canadian Traffic By the CRIA

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

According the research, only 14 percent of Canadians have downloaded music from P2P networks in the last 12 months. This is down from 15 percent last year. The percentage has been steadily decreasing over the past few years. It was at its height in 2002 and 2003 at 21 percent, then went down to 19 percent in 2004.

To dwell a wee bit longer in the stats, the demographic that had the highest filesharing activity was the young one. 39 percent of 12-17 year olds downloaded in the past 12 months, in comparison to 3 percent of those over the age of 46.

The RIAA’s Canadian arm, the CRIA commissioned a survey earlier this year that focused on the percentage of people that had ever used filesharing services at all. This number was clearly misleading as a whooping 69 percent of the 12-17 year olds and 64 percent of 18-25 year olds had tried using one or more of the many services at some point of time, but hadn’t necessarily kept using them. Therefore the CPCC’s figures seem to contradict the CRIA’s and quite clearly prove that filesharing is declining in Canada, even though certain parties would like to believe otherwise.

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.

Michael Geist went through the complete study report and concluded:

In summary, CRIA’s own research now concludes that P2P downloading constitutes less than one-third of the music on downloaders’ computers, that P2P users frequently try music on P2P services before they buy, that the largest P2P downloader demographic is also the largest music buying demographic, and that reduced purchasing has little to do with the availability of music on P2P services. I’ve argued many of these same things, but now you don’t have to take my word for it; you can take it from the record labels themselves.

Pollera, the company that conducted the story called Michael Geist’s interpretation “misleading, incorrect, and inconsistent” and wrote a 11page! response.

Michal Geist, who’s the Canada Research Chair of Internet and E-commerce Law at the University of Ottawa posted a great rebuttal to Pollera’s response. Here’s a snippet:

Pollara misleadingly recharacterizes some its own questions. For example, it points at page six to a question on whether the person had ever acquired a CD with songs downloaded from a file sharing service such as Kazaa. This is then inaccurately presented as “Ever Purchased or Received a CD That Contained Illegally Downloaded Tracks”. One might say that Pollara should stick to polling for its paying clients like CRIA rather than offering up its opinion on the legality of P2P in Canada.

Read More

Article from: TorrentFreak, check out our new blog at FreakBits.