TorrentFreak

Over the past several years many BitTorrent search engines have claimed in court that they’re “just like Google”, another search engine that allows users to find information scattered around the web. All this time Google itself remained silent on the issue, until now. The search giant has involved itself in the MPAA vs. isoHunt case recently, but not completely to the delight of isoHunt’s owner.

A group of 26 major record labels have sued the owner of Canadian BitTorrent site isoHunt for allegedly facilitating copyright infringement on a massive scale. Through this lawsuit the labels hope to shut down the isoHunt website while receiving over 4 million dollars in punitive damages to compensate for their claimed losses.

Vancouver’s Straight published an interesting piece on file-sharing and BitTorrent, with some comments from isoHunt founder Gary Fung. “File-sharing gives people the freedom to share what they want,” Fung said. “File-sharing is logically the next step in the Internet’s evolution, in the sense that it decentralizes distribution. Anyone that wants to distribute can distribute whatever [...]

BitTorrent search engine isoHunt is fighting the permanent injunction issued by the District Court of California last summer in their case against the MPAA. isoHunt contests the imposition of a site-wide keyword filter based on a list of movie industry keywords. By doing so, the search engine also makes a case for the public’s ‘freedom of search’, not just on BitTorrent, but on the Internet in general.

China is often criticized for its Internet censorship practices. Although this is certainly valid with regard to political issues, the United States is rapidly becoming one of the most progressive countries when it comes to commercial censorship. Safeguarding commercial interests is increasingly preferred above the rights of the general public. Ironically, BitTorrent sites may have to flee to China to keep their ‘freedom’.

BitTorrent search engine isoHunt has reversed the change it made earlier this year, where all US visitors were redirected to a ‘lite’ version of the site to prevent it from being shut down. With this move, isoHunt founder Gary Fung hopes to regain some of the visitors he lost due to the change. Meanwhile, isoHunt is awaiting the appeal of the permanent injunction the District Court of California issued in their case against the MPAA.

In a few months TorrentFreak turns five, and leading up to that milestone we will occasionally look back at how the BitTorrent landscape has changed over the years. Although there is no doubt that BitTorrent has more than quintupled its user base since 2005, there have been only a handful of sites serving a large slice of the masses.