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MPAA Demands Source Code of isoHunt’s “Failing” Piracy Filter

70 points by Lightning 13y ago

kristopolous 13y ago
This page fails to load phenomenally in a number of browsers (might be because the disqus comments are baked into the page load), here's the copy: The major hollywood movie studios have filed a motion for contempt against the popular torrent site isoHunt, arguing that a court-ordered piracy filter is not working properly. The MPAA informs the court that isoHunt has “deliberately engineered the filter to ensure that it is ineffective” and wants the site to turn over its source code to prove their claims. In addition, the MPAA wants millions of dollars in compensation for the damages the studios have suffered through the isoHunt site. isohuntAlmost three years ago the U.S. District Court of California ordered BitTorrent search engine isoHunt to start filtering its search results. The injunction was the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that began back in 2006. The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to censor the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S. isoHunt implemented the filter for U.S. visitors which allowed it to remain online, but at the same time owner Gary Fung took his case to the Court of Appeals. Through the appeal, isoHunt hoped to reverse the permanent injunction, but this didn’t come to pass. With the appeal concluded the movie studios are now asking for a summary judgment, hoping that the court awards them compensation for the many pirated movies that were downloaded via the isoHunt site. In addition, the MPAA has filed a motion for contempt claiming that the current keyword filter on the isoHunt Lite site is not doing its job. “The Isohunt Lite filtering problems are too serious and consistent to be mere matters of innocent ‘mistake’ or unavoidable filtering ‘leakage’ as Defendants have variously claimed,” the MPAA tells the court, suggesting that isoHunt is making these mistakes intentionally to keep up its profits. “The record to date supports the inference that Defendants have deliberately engineered the filter to ensure that it is ineffective in preventing access to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. As the Court found, because Defendants profit from infringement, they have a powerful economic incentive to continue providing users with access to Plaintiffs’ popular movies and television programs.” Backed up by screenshots, the MPAA cites several examples of popular movies whose titles are on the ban list, but are still available thought the site. “One work on Plaintiffs’ title list is the popular film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ for which Plaintiffs provided Defendants the movie title, release date and media type. Yet, the movie is available to any Isohunt Lite user who looks for it. Typing the term ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ into Isohunt Lite’s search box returns innumerable dot torrent files for the movie.” MPAA’s screenshot of isoHunt zerodark The movie studios argue that nearly all movies are still accessible through the site, which would mean that isoHunt is not in compliance with the injunction. While isoHunt has claimed that these are mere mistakes, the MPAA believes that it supports their motion for contempt. “These are not isolated instances. Virtually every movie Plaintiffs looked for using Isohunt Lite returned innumerable dot torrent files for Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. Defendants’ so-called filter does not even appear to block access to dot torrent files that match a movie’s exact title,” MPAA writes. “Facially, such a filter is wholly ineffective and cannot be the basis of compliance with an injunction that enjoins Defendants from ‘hosting, indexing, linking to, or otherwise providing access to any Dot-torrent or similar files that correspond, point or lead to any of the Copyrighted Works.’” The MPAA asks the court to order isoHunt to hand over all filter-related source code and databases, so the movie studios can show that the filtering failures are not “innocent mistakes” or “mere unavoidable leakage.” TorrentFreak asked isoHunt owner Gary Fung for a comment on the allegations put forward by the MPAA, but he chose not to respond at this time. It is clear that the MPAA is not letting the isoHunt case rest just yet. In addition to the motion for contempt there is also a motion for summary judgment pending. The movie studios are currently in the process of calculating the damages they have suffered as a result of isoHunt’s operations, which is expected to be in the millions. The MPAA previously won a $110 million judgment against the TorrentSpy site, and it’s expected the damages claimed against isoHunt will be in the same range, or perhaps even higher.
MWil 13y ago
In the legal world, this is why something called "specific performance" is rarely ever enforced by the court. Say I hire someone to build me a house and they fail to do so for whatever reason. Should the court really be in charge of babysitting and making sure this party builds me the house I ordered in exactly the way I ordered it? Probably not. This filter was a bad idea from the beginning. If someone had ordered my business to do something like this, I would have said "You build a working filter without any help from me and you can order me to install it if it is compatible, but you can't order me to build a working filter because that's indentured servitude"
- anologwintermut 13y ago
  Except the MPAA's filter could be: Disallow * Or realistically, just overly restrictive. So it's almost an impossible road to go down in either direction.
- shasta 13y ago
  Except the order wasn't to build a filter, full stop. It was to build a filter if isohunt wants to continue operating in the US.
  - AnthonyMouse 13y ago
    That doesn't seem any different in practice than ordering them to build the filter under penalty of a fine equivalent to 100% of their US-derived income.
    - eru 13y ago
      Not quite. The fine would be conceivably bigger than 100%.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
  I'm surprised that a screenshot counts as evidence. I guess it probably goes along with testimony about how it was obtained?
- 13y ago
tjtrapp 13y ago
It's funny to me that the MPAA has the time and resources for a code review on 3rd party code but still has yet to build an app that allows me to pay for streaming their content.
- quantumpotato_ 13y ago
  Thanks for keeping things in perspective.
- brownbat 13y ago
  Breaking: IsoHunt now in the market for a movie filter written in brainfuck or INTERCAL.
  - merlincorey 13y ago
    I suggest using whitespace.
  - stox 13y ago
    APL would be a better choice.
- cclogg 13y ago
  I am personally not a huge fan of streaming, I'd prefer to just pay a decent price per movie (not $30 like Blurays) and get a nice HD file with no DRM, no ads, and freedom to do whatever I want with the file (like iTunes music I guess? Though I don't even want to use that service... I prefer to just find songs on Youtube now... convenience I guess). Convenience really is my big issue; Steam has proven it's true for others too. It's much quicker to get a movie via tpb or where ever, than to go hunting around the few remaining video stores or try to find any legit place online (especially if it's a foreign film or an obscure 70's one). The other annoying thing is Youtube take-downs. There have been so many times where I wanted to show a clip of some show/movie to a friend and then couldn't find it on Youtube anymore :(.
  - zanny 13y ago
    I'd rather do a kickstarter (might be a bit big for kickstarter.com though) to buy major studios and release their IP work public domain. And then kickstart additional media works for them to produce. Cut out the middle men!
jrockway 13y ago
How exactly did the courts get into the business of censoring websites, anyway? Is it not isoHunt's first amendment right to tell people where to get pirated movies from? Follow-up question: how come the Usenet providers are not caught in this dragnet?
- hnha 13y ago
  no one is using Usenet so please don't talk about it... ahem!
- throwawaykf02 13y ago
  Where does speech end and "aiding and abetting" begin? Another way to think about it this: you have some property that has now become a haven of illegal activity (through no participation of your own) that is disrupting the local community. IANAL, but in such a case I'm guessing you could be compelled by the law to clean your property up. Even if the law has no way to compel, shouldn't there be?
  - MWil 13y ago
    that's why there are minimum legal requirements. they are minimal. you are not required to police your own website, even if it's full of illegal activity. the only way you would be responsible for doing so is if you a) affirmatively invited the activity or b) get notice from companies through a proper takedown notice and they specifically let you know what is illegal and where (url).
- benologist 13y ago
  Courts got into the business of censoring websites when they found websites got into the big business of infringing other's rights. Usenet is not immune: http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-the-mpaas-usenet-enemy-1-calls-it-quits-121129/ http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-the-mpaas-usenet-enemy-1-ca...
  - jrockway 13y ago
    To me, the problem is that torrents are descriptions of how to get the content, not the content. It's like banning a chemistry textbook because you could learn how to make a bomb.
codewiz 13y ago
[THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO A DMCA COPYRIGHT CLAIM]
tracker1 13y ago
Maybe IsoHunt should demand a $10 million bond be posted against the release of their very proprietary and important intellectual property?
- anigbrowl 13y ago
  Pointless. The court can simply take the evidence under seal, which is how these things are normally done.
belorn 13y ago
Whats the case history for demanding source code? I remember airplane crash victims asking for the source code for the plane computer, people demanding source code for voting machines, and others demanding source code for medical instruments in malpractice suits. Did anyone of those actually get the court to force disclosure of source code, in what capacity/scope, and did anyone win a legal case because the software was found as faulty after source code was disclosed and inspected?
beedogs 13y ago
Here's what I'd submit to them: 10 PRINT "GET FUCKED" 20 GOTO 10

70 points by Lightning 13y ago

This page fails to load phenomenally in a number of browsers (might be because the disqus comments are baked into the page load), here's the copy: The major hollywood movie studios have filed a motion for contempt against the popular torrent site isoHunt, arguing that a court-ordered piracy filter is not working properly. The MPAA informs the court that isoHunt has “deliberately engineered the filter to ensure that it is ineffective” and wants the site to turn over its source code to prove their claims. In addition, the MPAA wants millions of dollars in compensation for the damages the studios have suffered through the isoHunt site. isohuntAlmost three years ago the U.S. District Court of California ordered BitTorrent search engine isoHunt to start filtering its search results. The injunction was the result of isoHunt’s protracted court battle with the MPAA that began back in 2006. The Court ordered the owner of isoHunt to censor the site’s search engine based on a list of thousands of keywords provided by the MPAA, or cease its operations entirely in the U.S. isoHunt implemented the filter for U.S. visitors which allowed it to remain online, but at the same time owner Gary Fung took his case to the Court of Appeals. Through the appeal, isoHunt hoped to reverse the permanent injunction, but this didn’t come to pass. With the appeal concluded the movie studios are now asking for a summary judgment, hoping that the court awards them compensation for the many pirated movies that were downloaded via the isoHunt site. In addition, the MPAA has filed a motion for contempt claiming that the current keyword filter on the isoHunt Lite site is not doing its job. “The Isohunt Lite filtering problems are too serious and consistent to be mere matters of innocent ‘mistake’ or unavoidable filtering ‘leakage’ as Defendants have variously claimed,” the MPAA tells the court, suggesting that isoHunt is making these mistakes intentionally to keep up its profits. “The record to date supports the inference that Defendants have deliberately engineered the filter to ensure that it is ineffective in preventing access to Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. As the Court found, because Defendants profit from infringement, they have a powerful economic incentive to continue providing users with access to Plaintiffs’ popular movies and television programs.” Backed up by screenshots, the MPAA cites several examples of popular movies whose titles are on the ban list, but are still available thought the site. “One work on Plaintiffs’ title list is the popular film ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ for which Plaintiffs provided Defendants the movie title, release date and media type. Yet, the movie is available to any Isohunt Lite user who looks for it. Typing the term ‘Zero Dark Thirty’ into Isohunt Lite’s search box returns innumerable dot torrent files for the movie.” MPAA’s screenshot of isoHunt zerodark The movie studios argue that nearly all movies are still accessible through the site, which would mean that isoHunt is not in compliance with the injunction. While isoHunt has claimed that these are mere mistakes, the MPAA believes that it supports their motion for contempt. “These are not isolated instances. Virtually every movie Plaintiffs looked for using Isohunt Lite returned innumerable dot torrent files for Plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. Defendants’ so-called filter does not even appear to block access to dot torrent files that match a movie’s exact title,” MPAA writes. “Facially, such a filter is wholly ineffective and cannot be the basis of compliance with an injunction that enjoins Defendants from ‘hosting, indexing, linking to, or otherwise providing access to any Dot-torrent or similar files that correspond, point or lead to any of the Copyrighted Works.’” The MPAA asks the court to order isoHunt to hand over all filter-related source code and databases, so the movie studios can show that the filtering failures are not “innocent mistakes” or “mere unavoidable leakage.” TorrentFreak asked isoHunt owner Gary Fung for a comment on the allegations put forward by the MPAA, but he chose not to respond at this time. It is clear that the MPAA is not letting the isoHunt case rest just yet. In addition to the motion for contempt there is also a motion for summary judgment pending. The movie studios are currently in the process of calculating the damages they have suffered as a result of isoHunt’s operations, which is expected to be in the millions. The MPAA previously won a $110 million judgment against the TorrentSpy site, and it’s expected the damages claimed against isoHunt will be in the same range, or perhaps even higher.

MWil 13y ago

In the legal world, this is why something called "specific performance" is rarely ever enforced by the court. Say I hire someone to build me a house and they fail to do so for whatever reason. Should the court really be in charge of babysitting and making sure this party builds me the house I ordered in exactly the way I ordered it? Probably not. This filter was a bad idea from the beginning. If someone had ordered my business to do something like this, I would have said "You build a working filter without any help from me and you can order me to install it if it is compatible, but you can't order me to build a working filter because that's indentured servitude"

anologwintermut 13y ago
Except the MPAA's filter could be: Disallow * Or realistically, just overly restrictive. So it's almost an impossible road to go down in either direction.
shasta 13y ago
Except the order wasn't to build a filter, full stop. It was to build a filter if isohunt wants to continue operating in the US.
- AnthonyMouse 13y ago
  That doesn't seem any different in practice than ordering them to build the filter under penalty of a fine equivalent to 100% of their US-derived income.
  - eru 13y ago
    Not quite. The fine would be conceivably bigger than 100%.
fnordfnordfnord 13y ago
I'm surprised that a screenshot counts as evidence. I guess it probably goes along with testimony about how it was obtained?
13y ago

tjtrapp 13y ago

It's funny to me that the MPAA has the time and resources for a code review on 3rd party code but still has yet to build an app that allows me to pay for streaming their content.

quantumpotato_ 13y ago
Thanks for keeping things in perspective.
brownbat 13y ago
Breaking: IsoHunt now in the market for a movie filter written in brainfuck or INTERCAL.
- merlincorey 13y ago
  I suggest using whitespace.
- stox 13y ago
  APL would be a better choice.
cclogg 13y ago
I am personally not a huge fan of streaming, I'd prefer to just pay a decent price per movie (not $30 like Blurays) and get a nice HD file with no DRM, no ads, and freedom to do whatever I want with the file (like iTunes music I guess? Though I don't even want to use that service... I prefer to just find songs on Youtube now... convenience I guess). Convenience really is my big issue; Steam has proven it's true for others too. It's much quicker to get a movie via tpb or where ever, than to go hunting around the few remaining video stores or try to find any legit place online (especially if it's a foreign film or an obscure 70's one). The other annoying thing is Youtube take-downs. There have been so many times where I wanted to show a clip of some show/movie to a friend and then couldn't find it on Youtube anymore :(.
- zanny 13y ago
  I'd rather do a kickstarter (might be a bit big for kickstarter.com though) to buy major studios and release their IP work public domain. And then kickstart additional media works for them to produce. Cut out the middle men!

jrockway 13y ago

How exactly did the courts get into the business of censoring websites, anyway? Is it not isoHunt's first amendment right to tell people where to get pirated movies from? Follow-up question: how come the Usenet providers are not caught in this dragnet?

hnha 13y ago
no one is using Usenet so please don't talk about it... ahem!
throwawaykf02 13y ago
Where does speech end and "aiding and abetting" begin? Another way to think about it this: you have some property that has now become a haven of illegal activity (through no participation of your own) that is disrupting the local community. IANAL, but in such a case I'm guessing you could be compelled by the law to clean your property up. Even if the law has no way to compel, shouldn't there be?
- MWil 13y ago
  that's why there are minimum legal requirements. they are minimal. you are not required to police your own website, even if it's full of illegal activity. the only way you would be responsible for doing so is if you a) affirmatively invited the activity or b) get notice from companies through a proper takedown notice and they specifically let you know what is illegal and where (url).
benologist 13y ago
Courts got into the business of censoring websites when they found websites got into the big business of infringing other's rights. Usenet is not immune: http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-the-mpaas-usenet-enemy-1-calls-it-quits-121129/ http://torrentfreak.com/newzbin2-the-mpaas-usenet-enemy-1-ca...
- jrockway 13y ago
  To me, the problem is that torrents are descriptions of how to get the content, not the content. It's like banning a chemistry textbook because you could learn how to make a bomb.

codewiz 13y ago

[THIS COMMENT HAS BEEN REMOVED DUE TO A DMCA COPYRIGHT CLAIM]

tracker1 13y ago

Maybe IsoHunt should demand a $10 million bond be posted against the release of their very proprietary and important intellectual property?

anigbrowl 13y ago
Pointless. The court can simply take the evidence under seal, which is how these things are normally done.

belorn 13y ago

Whats the case history for demanding source code? I remember airplane crash victims asking for the source code for the plane computer, people demanding source code for voting machines, and others demanding source code for medical instruments in malpractice suits. Did anyone of those actually get the court to force disclosure of source code, in what capacity/scope, and did anyone win a legal case because the software was found as faulty after source code was disclosed and inspected?

beedogs 13y ago

Here's what I'd submit to them: 10 PRINT "GET FUCKED" 20 GOTO 10