Posted by: IH
Comments: 8 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=433857 2010-04-08T21:00:19-07:00 2010-04-08T21:00:19-07:00 [isohunt.com] for an example of the cached links I'm talking about.

True that we have disabled comments in Lite for legal reason, but ratings (with thumbs up, down) are still displayed, and it is factored in in the combined torrent search ranking, which includes seeds/leechers, ratings, search relevance and age. Many of you complain about missing sort and that is really uncalled for, the combined ranking is better in most cases especially with more spam trackers misreporting seeds/leechers stats. This ranking again is the same default ranking used on regular isoHunt which you come to love.

Sort by age for newest torrents is a valid feature missing and if you want this, we'll work on adding sort option for that.

So, if you don't like Lite, tell us why so we can improve it. Complaining that "it sucks" doesn't help. Nobody likes change but sometimes it's necessary, so help us change it for the better with constructive criticism.


New (04/14): Sorting options & table-like attributes formating now on Lite, as you requested
New (04/16): Search suggestions doubling as spell check, bug fixes

Posted by: IH
Comments: 122 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=432017 2010-04-05T18:18:49-07:00 2010-04-05T18:18:49-07:00 lighter and lightning-fast isoHunt! Although we bring this new search engine to you with a burden from the lawsuit brought by the MPAA, we hope you understand the reason why we are making this change. We are addressing concerns Judge Wilson has expressed over inducing copyright infringement in the United States. Though inducement is never our intention (and we have evidence to support it), with isoHunt Lite we want to affirm publicly that isoHunt's essential function is merely to provide a search engine and a public utility with all the net neutrality it affords and should be afforded.

Despite rumors that we are ordered to filter by keywords for the US, there's only a proposed order, no actual order. Freedom of speech, non-infringing use and technical implementability issues are still being debated in further court briefs. We have not done any keyword filtering and are fighting all we can not to, because we believe search terms are ambiguous by nature, and that any requirement to keyword filter is a violation of freedom of speech and tantamount to censorship. There are many non-infringing uses for BitTorrent technology and we hope you will be able to continue to use isoHunt for these, free of constraints by gaping holes in the dictionary because your search triggered a keyword in a title of one of the million movies that have been produced.

Why would you still use isoHunt, you ask now that it's just like Google and Yahoo, and you can search for torrents with those? While we won't dispute that claim, there's a fundamental difference: On isoHunt Lite you get ranking by constantly updated seeds/leechers and ratings, statistics specific for BitTorrent, in addition to search relevancy and age. A general search engine also do not group as one multiple, identical torrents spread on different websites on the Web. Your continued use of isoHunt will also support our upcoming appeal against the MPAA, and we thank you in advance.

We protest the possibility we may be required by US law in upcoming injunction to keyword filter for US users as it would be censorship. The DMCA mandates with good reason that copyright notice and takedowns requested by copyright holders be done under penalty of perjury with accurate identifcation, with standard practice of links or URLs, not broad mucking with the dictionary. If you want to join us in protest, share this by Tweet, Facebook, etc. and write to Congress. Donation to organizations like the EFF will also help.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 150 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=415217 2010-03-13T00:00:42-08:00 2010-03-13T00:00:42-08:00 my post from yesterday , you'd know that the basis of the matter is that Christine Filipak falsely accused a BT indexing site admin of being a child molester, stalker, and quite a few other not very nice things. Why'd she do this? A misunderstanding on her part regarding the voluntary DMCA compliance of that site (bitsnoop.com), which was hosted in Russia at the time. In the last 24 hours, I've made contact with Pavel, of bitsnoop.com, and requested all emails between them... not so surprisingly, he was more than happy to hand them over, and now, with his permission, you can read them too. Btw, I did in fact ask Christine Filipak of Monolith Graphics (representing Nox Arcana) for the same emails that bitsnoop provided me, and strangely enough, the more damaging emails from her to bitsnoop weren't included in what she provided us. Anyway, now the public can see how she tries to bully people into getting her way.

Taken out of context, here's something that Christine sent in the last couple hours.

Quote:

I really am sorry for saying pedophile. I agree that was harsh... a female reaction for sure.

So, Christine, not because bitsnoop.com refused to take down download links (which they did), but because bitsnoop's policy at the time was to leave non-links up (including index data, such as seed/leech stats), Christine not only threatened to (as you'll see in the emails below) but actually did in fact wage a war of misinformation against bitsnoop.com.

Anyway, if you'd like to just read the cliffnotes, monolithgraphics_notes.txt was written by me, and is arranged chronologically.

Nox Arcana fan? spend your money elsewhere.

Think that real pedophiles need to be put out of business? join the facebook group.

torrent here *updated
Please note, this URL may change, that is, if I get motivated enough to include the more recent correspondence where Christine tries to bully us into removing this commentary.

Update : our filestorage backend is having some maintenance performed on it right now. when I wake up tomorrow, I may readd that torrent to the release I did earlier, I might not.

Posted by: SecretSquirrel
Comments: 20 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=414629 2010-03-11T20:50:05-08:00 2010-03-11T20:50:05-08:00

Quote:

URGENT A user on your network, who we believe is <redacted>(bitsnoop.com admin) ISP-IP: <redacted> has been sending abusive messages and has most recently posted several photographs of a girl (age 15), on your webspace. Each time I have emailed <redacted> to request that the material be removed, he has escalated and has become more threatening in his replies, via email and via his online retaliation. The girl mentioned is one of the children of a couple we met at a convention. They had innocently posted their photos on their own family web page and <redacted> found them and has spread this and other pictures all over the net, and has altered some of the images, inciting other child predators to follow in his wake. I am asking for your assistance in stopping this internet predator. Please remove this html page and the torrent files, and block the hash: [isohunt.com] [isohunt.com] Thank you for your help (I hope), Christine Filipak Monolith Graphics <redacted> phone <redacted> email <redacted>@monolithgraphics.com The content of this letter is PRIVATE, intended for the recipient only. Re-distribution or publishing of this content is expressly forbidden.

Now, why would Christine send an email like this to our copyright address? Oh, right, to assassinate another person's character by calling them a pedophile. What evidence is there to back up this conclusion? Oh, about 7 posts over at bitsnoop.com's blog ( 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ). If you compare the linked to picture marked (NSFW) in post #5 titled ("Joe,%20Chris,%20Corvis%20&%20Don.jpg") to the filenames in the link Christine sent us, you'll notice a similarity. So, Christine Filipak claimed that photos of herself, with some book author were photos of a 15 year old girl who's allegedly being abused. What? That's not enough proof? Well, how about this: Borders%20signing%2010-15-05.jpg ... same filename as the first file in the reported link (which doesn't look like a 15 year old girl to me). 7th file down in the complained of link is titled Joe, Chris, Corvis & Don.jpg , which is Christine Filipak. Oh, crap, caught publicly in a lie. Good job that.

So, what happened here? Nox Arcana's DMCA agent got upset that one of her DMCA notifications was posted online and decided to start a smear campaign against the guy running bitsnoop.com. In most countries, there's a couple legal terms for this degree of defamation of character: libel and slander. Libel is defined as: a false and malicious publication printed for the purpose of defaming a living person. Slander is defined as: words falsely spoken that damage the reputation of another. Given that both html and email are written, and not spoken, this would be identified as libel, since slander is often identified as only being spoken word, not written word. Still, slander and libel are both actionable (meaning you can get sued over). Considering the owner of bitsnoop is identified as living in Russia, it'd be kinda hard for him to sue over this... so, since I don't appreciate being lied to, especially about something as serious as kiddie porn (which, btw, we remove immediately upon receipt of notice, and it's usually not hard to spot kiddie porn from the titles and filename listings).

My hope is that would-be customers of Nox Arcana and Monolith Graphics reconsider spending their money with people who're willing to infer that *we* (us being torrent sites, and you being torrent site visitors) are all child predators/pedophiles (see post #6).

Is this an endorsement by us of bitsnoop.com? Nope
Do we think it's completely unacceptable to dream up some lies about someone just because you're unhappy with something they've done? Very much so, which is why this post is on the front page.

Oh, about that disclaimer, please see "stupid disclaimers" , here , or here . Basically, the jist of what I'm saying is that since I haven't agreed not to disclose the above email, there's no binding contract to that effect, which means that the "expressly forbidden" part of her signature is false and misleading.

Posted by: SecretSquirrel
Comments: 35 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=402389 2010-02-23T03:39:53-08:00 2010-02-23T03:39:53-08:00
The US court ruled, in late December 2009, in Summary Judgment that we were liable for secondary copyright infringement, you may have read about it in the news. What you have not heard however is what happened since the status conference in January. The Judge, at the status conference, agreed to provide us after the injunction phase, but before the damages phase, with an interlocutory appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. Before we appeal however, we must undergo injunction motions and that's what we are doing now. Plaintiffs have filed their motion with their proposed measure for injunction a couple of weeks ago. The Plaintiffs proposed injunction and its keyword type filter, in our view, raises serious issues on the balance between freedom of speech, fair use and copyright protectionism. Such keyword filter is also impossible to implement if it's to have any sort of precision, nor can it avoid conflict with fair use cases, free commerce, or extra-territorial law. We have just filed our response in opposition:

[isohunt.com]


isoHunt Lite

We are in the process of developing isoHunt Lite, a lighter, simpler, and faster version of isoHunt, and need user testing and bug reports for our beta version to iron out the bugs. Should the Court accept a version of isoHunt Lite during the injunction phase, it may become the required interface for our US users. Currently the isoHunt lite beta is a work in progress. You can preview the beta now, and whether you are from the US or not, we welcome your bug reports on the new isoHunt Lite:

[isohunt.com]

A reason for isoHunt Lite is that we propose it as a measure for injunction, as it no longer contains any red flags for inducement that were found at Summary Judgment. And without inducement, an important question with wide ramifications we can then ask is, when does a content agnostic search engine that specializes in a vertical like the BitTorrent ecosystem be ineligible for the DMCA Safe Harbors, an information location tool like isoHunt that has both non-infringing and infringing uses? When non-infringing uses in the ecosystem is growing, exemplified by the latest independent success stories like in Ink?

We will have an injunction hearing on March 22. Our appeal will follow after that, stay tuned.


UPDATE (after hearing): Despite rumors that we are ordered to keyword filter for US, there's only a proposed order, no actual order. Freedom of speech, non-infringing use and technical implementability issues are still being debated.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 139 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=363813 2010-01-03T13:19:10-08:00 2010-01-03T13:19:10-08:00
Thanks

In the meantime, firewaling 193.104.22.0/24 and at least 89.149.236.46 as well will "help" mitigate the effects of these bad ads. 193.104.22.0/24 has been involved in more than just today's problems. We are in contact with our advertisers about these bad ads.

If you'd like to read more about the PDF exploit (and why you should disable pdf plugins immediately):
[isc.sans.org]
[extraexploit.blogspot.com]

Posted by: SecretSquirrel
Comments: 108 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=343277 2009-12-07T02:26:42-08:00 2009-12-07T02:26:42-08:00 MvixUSA (who makes awesome torrent-enabled media centers and whose geeky products get picked up often in the Top 10 Holiday Gift Guides in many magazines). They have gone all festive on us and have sponsored a crazy Holiday Giveaway exclusive for isoHunt – Starting Today. We will have well over 30 items in the next twelve days to ensure you have lots of fun, lots of chances to win and lots of shopping ideas!

The 12 Days of Christmas Giveaway will run from December 8th to December 19th with a new and exciting prize every day. As we get closer to the final days, the prizes get bigger, better and more $$. It's worth over $1500 in total!

To enter, simply reply to this post as an isoHunt member in forum with the following: Have you used Mvix products before, what do you think about them, and how do you plan on using them. That's it! Each reply counts as one entry, only replies with the details above are counted, and you are allowed to reply to this draw once per day at most. Multiple accounts are automatically disqualified.

At the end of each day, a random drawing will be held for all eligible entries. Due to overwhelming responses and we needing to validate entrants, and most replies concerns Mvix's products generally rather than only on prize of upcoming day, the draw will happen at end of the 12 days. Your responses should still be directed toward the prize of the upcoming day as updated in this post, but only 1 post per isoHunt member will be counted towards draw for all 12 prizes. Winners will be contacted via private message / email on isohunt.com and will be announced as soon as confirmations come in.

Here are the prizes (to be updated for each upcoming draw):

Day 1 - Mvix Tshirt    (Value: $5)
Day 2 - Mvix Tshirt + Optical Cable (Value: $10)
Day 3 - Mvix Tshirt + HDMI Cable (Value: $15)
Day 4 - Mvix TShirt + USB Wireless-G Adapter (Value: $30)
Day 5 - Mvix TShirt + USB SATA HDD Dock (Value: $40)
Day 6 - Mvix Tshirt + Nubbin USB Wireless-N Adapter (Value: $45)
Day 7 - Mvix MV-6000R Media Player (Value: $99)
Day 8 - Mvix MV-6000R Media Player + 500GB HDD (Value: $140)
Day 9 - Mvix Ultio MX-800HD Media Player (Value: $170) - What's Ultio?
Day 10 - Mvix Ultio MX-800HD Media Player + 500GB HDD (Value: $220) - What's Ultio?
Day 11 - Mvix Minx (MX-3250HD-BB) HTPC Barebones Kit (Value: $299)
Day 12 - Mvix Minx (MX-3250HD) Home Theater PC (Value: $399)

Posted by: IH
Comments: 726 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=335281 2009-11-27T06:30:19-08:00 2009-11-27T06:30:19-08:00 legal struggle with CRIA, so I'm not repeating them here again. Since CRIA's initial cease and desist letters (effectively asking us to shutdown entirely), we have tried to reason with CRIA, have petitioned the court on our legal right to exist as a search engine. Both to no avail, since Judge Curtis has denied our "petition" as improper form, and have ordered us to a normal, lengthy and costly legal "action". We have done that this week.

Here's our Statement of Claim (pdf) we just filed for our action at the BC Supreme Court.

As I've written to the Canadian government in the public consultation for upcoming copyright reform, I have high hopes for Canadian copyright laws and its courts to not make the mistakes that have been made elsewhere in the world. We must fight the increasing noise we are drowned in, that file sharing is stealing. I believe we Canadians are especially blessed with musical talent such as Sarah McLachlan, Celine Dion, Nelly Furtado, Lights and many others. So many that our "cultural output" per capita is arguably greater than that of many other countries. And we have done this without the excessive litigation against consumers that the legal climate in countries like our southern neighbor has encouraged. Thanks in part to our lack of DMCA-like copyright laws that does more harm than good.

With continued changes in both the digital marketplace and usage of P2P search engines like isoHunt, I believe now is a better time than ever to put our differences aside with copyright owners, and figure out how we can utilize P2P distribution and social media for the benefit of all. The internet has widened our choice in music more than ever before, and the music industry is live and well contrary to lies of certain lobbyists. The EU have also commissioned a study that found, P2P is not to blame for failures of certain parts of content industries. Why? How? Because P2P is the greatest radio ever.

If you are a musician and agree with us, we would love to hear from you! We have already heard many interesting feedback, like that of a book author, we want to hear more. And I cordially invite you to join our new spinoff, Hexagon.cc. Together, we can create a better future for content distribution and sharing. Same goes out to film makers, software and game developers.

As for CRIA and member record labels, if you come to your sense of reason, I would love to talk to you outside of court. The ball you've dropped on us is back to you.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 129 ]]> http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=321925 2009-11-05T16:33:03-08:00 2009-11-05T16:33:03-08:00 Vodo, here comes their second film release after US Now: In Guantanamo. This is a quote of what the short documentary film is about:

Quote:

David Miller’s quiet, powerful film is the result of three days the filmmaker spent touring the Guantanamo prison camps in May 2008, as part of a small group of media representatives allowed there. Although the event was presented as a chance to ‘see inside’ the working of Guantanamo, it was in fact a carefully staged PR exercise designed to yield predictable, stale, controlled media images.

This is an exclusive release on Hex, so you got this from us first By no means however should this remain exclusive, and Vodo's films are Creative Commons licensed. So share on!

We are excited to have Vodo creating their group at Hexagon. Hexagon.cc has now grown to more than 70,000 users with over 2000 groups, covering various interests and social circles. If you haven't seen Hexagon.cc yet, time to see what it's about!

And of course, support Vodo and join their group! For aspiring musicians and fans, check out our featured groups from Awesome New Republic and our Creative Commons group. Hex is all about connecting artists and producers with fans, so spread the word and find new interesting uses for torrent and video sharing at Hexagon.cc.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 7 ]]>