begood Posted June 15, 2010 Report Posted June 15, 2010 The attorney for search engine Isohunt urged a federal appeals court to block a lower court ruling that might lead to the collapse of the site. Isohunt, which has 30 million unique monthly visitors, asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to block a March takedown order in what was the first U.S. ruling testing the legality of BitTorrent search engines, said Ira Rothken, the site’s attorney. Hollywood’s legal tactics shuttered TorrentSpy in the United States in 2008, but the merits of that BitTorrent search engine’s case were never decided. Isohunt, the Canadian-based site run by 27-year-old Gary Fung, is challenging U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson’s injunction (.pdf) as being too broad, Rothken said. That judge ruled that Isohunt was an unlawful avenue to free, copyrighted movies and television shows. One issue concerns how Fung should remove searches from his three search engines: Isohunt, Torrentbox and Podtropolis. The Motion Picture Association of America, which brought the case, has sent keyword searches it wants removed, like the number 10, Alice in Wonderland and Dracula, Rothken said. “One person’s copyrighted Wizard of Oz is another person’s public domain work,” Rothken said in a brief telephone interview Tuesday. He said the movie studios should provide URLs or hashes, which would positively identify which search link should be removed. “The motion picture studios do not have a monopoly on names on things. That is where the injunction is violating the First Amendment,” he said. The MPAA, which won the March 23 injunction, declined comment. Even if the appeals court does not immediately intervene or stay the Los Angeles federal judge’s injunction, Rothken said Isohunt would not go under anytime soon, if at all. “Depending on what happens, there may or may not be proceedings to interpret the injunction in the trial court,” he said. The judge said “upwards of 95 percent of all dot-torrent files downloaded from Isohunt’s three websites returned infringing material or works that are “at least highly likely to be infringing.” Judge Wilson ruled Friday that he would not stay enforcement of the injunction unless by an order of the federal appeals court. The injunction gives Isohunt about two weeks to comply with Hollywood’s takedown notices. The judge attempted to clarify the injunction on Friday, saying the keyword searches “shall only apply to film and television works copyrighted by plaintiffs.”Read More http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/06/isohunt-not-dead-yet/ Quote
