IsoHunt Forced to Shut Down in the US

A couple of big rulings on file-sharing in the US came within hours of each other and, despite the similarities of the two cases, but in keeping with recent history, they’re completely at odds. On the one hand, notorious BitTorrent search engine IsoHunt is basically forced to shut down in the US, on the other, equally notorious file-locker site Rapidshare managed to fight off an injunction on a copyright-infringement claim.

The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has been after IsoHunt for years now, having filed a complaint against it in 2006, and it seems it has finally gotten what it wants. In a final ruling, the judge presiding the case has issued a permanent injunction against the site and the related TorrentBox. In it, IsoHunt is asked to remove all torrent files, which may contain works copyrighted by the major Hollywood studios. The site has to enforce a list of banned keywords and remove any torrent that may contain them.

Of course, this is close to impossible practically, at least not possible without affecting plenty of torrents that may not be covered by the plaintiff’s copyright. What it means is that IsoHunt will have to block access to all US users, or shut down the site entirely, though a decision hasn’t been made by the site’s owners.

In a case of a similar nature, Perfect 10, an adult-content company, went after Rapidshare for hosting copyright-infringing files. The company has been doing this for years, going as far as accusing image search engines of copyright infringement because of thumbnail images and so on. It has never won a case and, this time, it was no different.

Perfect 10 tried to get a preliminary injunction, but the judge believed that Rapidshare took enough measures to ensure copyrighted works were not illegally shared on the site that it absolved it from any responsibility. Because Rapidshare works to remove infringing files from the site and because it doesn’t have a dedicated search engine of its own, the judge refused to grant the preliminary injunction.

It’s hardly the first time judges seem to disagree over these issues and it’s not going to be the last. But it’s interesting because Rapidshare actually hosts the infringing files, while IsoHunt merely provides a search engine for BitTorrent files, which by themselves aren’t infringing.