Right now there is a deathly pall hanging over the Internet, and the world of BitTorrent in particular. As we saw with the take down of Megaupload and the constant seizure of domains that the US Department of Justice and ICE don’t like because they think that they are just fronts for illegal acts being an owner of a site that has anything to do with BitTorrents isn’t good for your health.
As we saw leading up to the Super Bowl the definition of what is illegal is entirely at the whim of US agencies as a large number of sites, including a large number that were not based in the US, on servers that were not based in the US, or in countries that didn’t think they were doing anything illegal, were seized. This has only added to the worry of site owners around the world to the point that many of them are shutting down – permanently.
While we are all probably familiar with the most famous of the BitTorrents sites – The Pirate Bay – there is one other torrent site that has been fighting both the music and movie industry for the past six years. Owned by Canadian Gary Hung isoHunt is one of the oldest torrent sites, next to The Pirate Bay of course, and Hung has taken a rather novel approach to fighting those that would love to take him down.
Unlike other sites who wait to be sued or harassed by the music and movie industry Gary Hung took the novel approach and sued them first; and it turns out that may have been a very smart move given the latest witch hunt against torrent sites.
Ironically enough, isoHunt’s ongoing legal battle might be what keeps Fung relatively safe. If the authorities planned to launch a criminal investigation against a torrent site it would be strange to pick one that is already involved in a civil lawsuit with a copyright holder.
Besides not being worried about the future, isoHunt’s owner is going on the offensive and is urging the entertainment industries to embrace technology, instead if fighting it.
“Perhaps more than ever, I wish the content industries will wake up to the fact you can’t fight technological progress, that battles maybe won, the war is already lost. Unless Content really starts working with technology to accelerate spread of culture, as the Internet has naturalized it. And make more money than ever in the process,” Fung says.
“Because so-called piracy enabled by the Internet and media consumption is not a zero-sum game, a download does not equal a lost sale, and what pirates really want is not necessarily free as in beer, but free as in speech and convenience.”
via TorrentFreak
Personally that last item – convenience – is the biggest tipping point. Make it drop dead simple to buy while not pricing yourself out of the market will do more to bring you customers than taking down a hundred torrent sites will.
