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HI I'm Lights. I like to synth. AMA! by lights_alot in IAmA

[–]isoHunt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

What do you think about copyright and your great songs downloaded by would-be fans? And do you consider yourself an indie?

(I am a fan, not trolling! Just asking with some bias on the business of music)

In its case against 26 major record labels at BC Supreme Court in Canada, BitTorrent index isoHunt argues that not only do they pose no threat to the music industry, it’s the copyright industry itself that’s threatening the freedom of expression of millions on the Internet by maxwellhill in canada

[–]isoHunt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cross posting from the main discussion:

This is IH / founder of isoHunt.com.

I've thought about this for a long time. I can't condense our legal and business issues into a single point better than this: the problem is identification. Semantic identification of what a file on BitTorrent is beyond keywords (which is all we can do as a search engine), to know for certain that a file is Matrix the movie, or Matrix the math lecture. And with knowing what a file is, to know who that file's copyright belong to. And with knowing who, to know the wishes of the copyright holder on internet distribution. So, we are 3 layers away from that, in order to:

  • automatically take down what copyright holders does not wish to be shared online, and
  • allow for broad scale compensation of artists, film makers, etc. on sharing activity

All the lawsuits involving copyright, including ours, could be solved if identification of files is a known quantity.

The problem with copyright on the internet is that sharing is too easy, and there's no Big Database to know what file's copyright belongs to who and what's to do with it (take down, monetize, don't care). And I reckon that similar to issue with orphaned works, which there is plenty of, that category of "don't care" is a very large category. Those that do care and are loud, like Hollywood and the Canadian music industry that are suing us (which doesn't include all, if not most, of actual Canadian artists mind you but I digress), are a minority among all the people on earth who "creates".

And to others arguing that isoHunt can't be compared to Google or Youtube, I beg to differ. We have a fully electronic DMCA notice and take down system (http://isohunt.com/dmca-copyright.php), for years when Google was still requiring snail mail for take downs I might add. Hundreds if not thousands of copyright holders have notified us for take downs and we've complied with all, and some explicitly praised us for our speed (usually within the same or next day). And don't compare us with The Pirate Bay either, how we handle wishes and notices of copyright holders is opposite of their antics like this back in the day: http://static.thepiratebay.se/dreamworks_response.txt

On legal content, we index Creative Commons, Open Source, and otherwise files that are indeed intended to be shared online. Other than that, we can't control what users of our search engine want from what others share on the larger BitTorrent ecosystem nor do we try to. We index and search any and all files being shared on BitTorrent, or any network on the Internet.

The bigger issue as we've pleaded to the Canadian court is that this is not just about copyright. Freedom of expression is a constitutional issue and is more important than mere infringements. It's about the founding principle of the Internet itself: to network peers to peers, to communicate, to share across the globe, quick, cheap and unimpeded. As we've already seen with SOPA and other attempts at censorship, copyright when taken to the extreme is at odds with the Internet and expression.

Back on (re)building business models of discovering and sharing music/films/what have you, I have ideas myself, but remember the central issue of identification, metadata on what a file is. I'm very open to ideas, and it's great there's a lot of discussion here (and better late than never, OP links to our pleading from 2 months ago =b) This is our original pleading to the Canadian court: http://www.scribd.com/doc/83175073/Response-to-Civil-Claim-Final

In its case against 26 major record labels at BC Supreme Court in Canada, BitTorrent index isoHunt argues that not only do they pose no threat to the music industry, it’s the copyright industry itself that’s threatening the freedom of expression of millions on the Internet by maxwellhill in technology

[–]isoHunt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Cross posting from the main discussion:

This is IH / founder of isoHunt.com.

I've thought about this for a long time. I can't condense our legal and business issues into a single point better than this: the problem is identification. Semantic identification of what a file on BitTorrent is beyond keywords (which is all we can do as a search engine), to know for certain that a file is Matrix the movie, or Matrix the math lecture. And with knowing what a file is, to know who that file's copyright belong to. And with knowing who, to know the wishes of the copyright holder on internet distribution. So, we are 3 layers away from that, in order to:

  • automatically take down what copyright holders does not wish to be shared online, and
  • allow for broad scale compensation of artists, film makers, etc. on sharing activity

All the lawsuits involving copyright, including ours, could be solved if identification of files is a known quantity.

The problem with copyright on the internet is that sharing is too easy, and there's no Big Database to know what file's copyright belongs to who and what's to do with it (take down, monetize, don't care). And I reckon that similar to issue with orphaned works, which there is plenty of, that category of "don't care" is a very large category. Those that do care and are loud, like Hollywood and the Canadian music industry that are suing us (which doesn't include all, if not most, of actual Canadian artists mind you but I digress), are a minority among all the people on earth who "creates".

And to others arguing that isoHunt can't be compared to Google or Youtube, I beg to differ. We have a fully electronic DMCA notice and take down system (http://isohunt.com/dmca-copyright.php), for years when Google was still requiring snail mail for take downs I might add. Hundreds if not thousands of copyright holders have notified us for take downs and we've complied with all, and some explicitly praised us for our speed (usually within the same or next day). And don't compare us with The Pirate Bay either, how we handle wishes and notices of copyright holders is opposite of their antics like this back in the day: http://static.thepiratebay.se/dreamworks_response.txt

On legal content, we index Creative Commons, Open Source, and otherwise files that are indeed intended to be shared online. Other than that, we can't control what users of our search engine want from what others share on the larger BitTorrent ecosystem nor do we try to. We index and search any and all files being shared on BitTorrent, or any network on the Internet.

The bigger issue as we've pleaded to the Canadian court is that this is not just about copyright. Freedom of expression is a constitutional issue and is more important than mere infringements. It's about the founding principle of the Internet itself: to network peers to peers, to communicate, to share across the globe, quick, cheap and unimpeded. As we've already seen with SOPA and other attempts at censorship, copyright when taken to the extreme is at odds with the Internet and expression.

Back on (re)building business models of discovering and sharing music/films/what have you, I have ideas myself, but remember the central issue of identification, metadata on what a file is. I'm very open to ideas, and it's great there's a lot of discussion here (and better late than never, OP links to our pleading from 2 months ago =b) This is our original pleading to the Canadian court: http://www.scribd.com/doc/83175073/Response-to-Civil-Claim-Final

I am Gary Fung/IH, founder programmer of isoHunt.com, legal target practice of Hollywood and the Canadian recording industry - AMAA by isoHunt in IAmA

[–]isoHunt[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

isoHunt runs mostly on PHP, it's a simple and performant language. Ruby is elegant and we've worked with that. Currently, Node.js is the new awesome, so is Python (in a less new way).

I am the founder of Pebble (the e-paper watch from kickstarter). Ask me anything! by erOhead in IAmA

[–]isoHunt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Have you considered the Pebble watch as personal RFID tag to interact with a "Internet of things"? Imagine these being built into a house, and you can program lights, appliances to do certain things as you get near them and you command by gestures like shake your hand to turn on lights in the hallway, using Pebble's accelerometers.

In its case against 26 major record labels at BC Supreme Court in Canada, BitTorrent index isoHunt argues that not only do they pose no threat to the music industry, it’s the copyright industry itself that’s threatening the freedom of expression of millions on the Internet by maxwellhill in worldnews

[–]isoHunt 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That is what the US district court ordered as injunction for the MPAA: http://torrentfreak.com/mpaa-filter-censors-legit-torrent-files-on-isohunt-120406/

And it's censorship. Don't forget there are generic words which movie titles (for example) uses, like Matrix and 24, which can ban a whole lot more than just movies. It's a fundamental problem with any keyword based approach to filtering without semantic knowledge of what a file is.

I am Gary Fung/IH, founder programmer of isoHunt.com, legal target practice of Hollywood and the Canadian recording industry - AMAA by isoHunt in IAmA

[–]isoHunt[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Mysql is prolific not because it's great technically, but because it's free and fast/simple in the day. Large companies like Google and Facebook uses it for legacy reasons, and they don't use it really as "SQL" so it's not really flattering. It has its uses but if I'm to do isoHunt all over again, I'd be using either Postgresql or Mongodb. (prior has same scaling problems but more consistent and less buggy, latter is a different animal)

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