isoHunt News

Hexagon.cc exclusive film release: In Guantanamo [3]

Thu, 05 Nov 2009 23:33:03 GMT

From our friends at 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: 3

Announcing Hexagon.cc, a Social File Sharing site [111]

Thu, 03 Sep 2009 08:11:45 GMT

With a short review at Torrentfreak and a mention in my interview with BBC, I'm excited to finally announcing a public preview of our spinoff project Hexagon.cc ! We have spent 2 years developing this, and I assure you this will change the way you think of a BitTorrent site and file sharing.

How is Hexagon different? The biggest conceptual change is everything is shared within groups you can join and create yourself. These groups can be public, based on interests or made by independent bands, film makers, game studios, etc. for promotional purposes. They can also be made private, so you can very easily and comfortably invite your friends to a private group for sharing your private videos and such. You can do this on Youtube and similar sites, but with BitTorrent, you can share any type of file and not only video, and there's no restriction on file format or size (as much as you can seed). In Hexagon groups, you can also share both torrents as well as flash videos so you get the best of both worlds. This blend of BT and flash video sharing is an unique first.

Another big feature of Hexagon is organization. We've seen through the rise of sharing on BitTorrent, volume of spam rises with its popularity. We've addressed this on isoHunt with comments and rating powered by you, but on Hexagon we've taken organization and spam control to a whole new level technically. Hexagon is (currently) invite only, so if a spammer gets in somehow and start inviting other spammers and creating other accounts, we can chain ban such with relative ease. Hexagon have also taken a very sophisticated approach to files organization. Besides tags now commonly found on many sites, Hexagon did away with the traditional "Videos", "Audio", etc. general categorization and instead, you can label or link your torrent posts with Semantic Web resources. For example, a firefox 3.5 torrent should associate to the Firefox resource, and under the Firefox resource you can easily browse all torrents in association for different versions of Firefox. This is a definite first for any social media site, and goes a long way in organizing the huge volume of torrents being shared.

Hexagon.cc is currently open for more users to stress test the system. We would very much appreciate your feedback as we continue to add new features and improve the site! But first, Digg this and Reddit this before

Sign up with this limited invitation: ~~http://lobby.hexagon.cc/invitations/0UAUYvncEt~~ http://lobby.hexagon.cc/invitations/kLVGYtaQmG <- (new invites available now at new link)

Read on if you want to see more details on the design, features and future direction of Hexagon.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 111

Globe & Mail's series, the Download Decade [8]

Mon, 11 May 2009 07:28:38 GMT

Globe and Mail, a high profile Canadian business newspaper, has launched the Download Decade series (digg this, they deserve it!). 6 months in the making and for one which they revamped their whole site programming in order to accommodate the new multimedia in the series, I especially applaud the fact that the Globe and Mail have now joined the CBC in releasing multimedia content over BitTorrent. Adoption of BitTorrent at big publications like G&M in a series celebrating the 10th year anniversary of Napster is a symbolic milestone in itself. What can we look forward to in the next decade to come? I think it's going to be exciting.

Currently only Part 1 of 5 in the series is out at launch of the Download Decade, featuring a long look back at Napster and the beginning of P2P. I have been interviewed, expect yours truly to come up in the coming parts. There's so much insights summed up in the series involving the enormously complicated legal and political issues surrounding copyright, culture and creativity, with well compiled audio/video interviews and interactive content. I highly recommend you to follow this series.

And of course, what's a news worth without torrents? Torrent of Part 1 as well as the upcoming parts in the series should be indexed here.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 8

Tweeting, Facebooking and other news [25]

Sat, 02 May 2009 02:48:26 GMT

I'm finding less time to write long writeups, so I'm going to start "microblogging" on Twitter instead since a lot of our news is commentary on external links relevant to isoHunt and BitTorrent anyways. This way I can post short comments on interesting news much quicker, and you can tweet your heart out on individual links.

Announcements and news not found anywhere else will still be posted as longer posts here on isoHunt frontpage, particular to developments on isoHunt and BitTorrent/P2P generally.

Also, since we find the new Facebook Pages to be better layout and public, we are moving our old Facebook group to our new Facebook page. Check it out and be a fan!

And here's some local (to us) news on me demonstrating my Jedi mind tricks: This is not the CD you are looking for.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 25

Word from our special partners and sponsors [3]

Sat, 02 May 2009 02:30:49 GMT

A few announcements from our partners that a fairly significant in the BitTorrent scene.

First off, quoting ANR below:

Quote:

Awesome New Republic (ANR) and Honor Roll Music are proud to announce the free release of ANR's Rational Geographic Volume 1 as a direct 25mb .zip download via their homepage and from all major torrent sites ( torrents listing ). ANR is targeting the torrent community with a month-long sponsorship of Isohunt, via a prominently featured banner advertisement that links directly to both the .zip file and torrent. In a music industry that is quickly changing, Honor Roll Music recognizes that torrent search engines such as Isohunt should not be vilified, but rather worked with cooperatively in order to reach millions of music fans eager to discover and download new music. Awesome New Republic and Honor Roll are confident that the genuine musicianship and modern pop sensibility displayed on Rational Geographic Volume 1 will speak for itself, and in turn captivate the attention of anyone who listens.

This marks an important milestone, that there is indeed common ground between isoHunt (and sharing sites like it) and musicians, filmmakers, game makers, etc. With TPB losing their trial, it's important to see this fact, that P2P is not about piracy or stealing, but that it is a better Radio that can be used for the benefit of creative people. I know many of you loath "bad" or distasteful ads (believe me, I try to get rid of them but ads are what keeps this site going), but this is one ad shouldn't miss

Secondly, another awesome use of our JSON api besides the awesome iPhone web app: LittleShoot mashes social media sharing and searching for torrents or flash videos alike. Torrents search results in LittleShoot is powered by isoHunt, and props to them for making torrenting easier for new and old users alike!

Last but not least, we are running a big promotion with Jinx: Free isoHunt sticker with any t-shirt purchase! Plus get 20% off everything at Jinx for the month of May (while supplies last), if you checkout with coupon code ISOHUNT . Grab your free isoHunt stickers now and stick them everywhere! And our shirts too with the discount!

Posted by: IH
Comments: 3

What kind of file sharer are you? [208]

Sat, 21 Mar 2009 04:14:58 GMT

With the media attention our recent court date with CRIA have generated (good comments here ), the debate has centered around "piracy" this and piracy that and whether isoHunt as a search engine "facilitates" such piracy. I would of course say we don't, with all the non-infringing uses I've endorsed on the frontpage here with Creative Commons or otherwise copyleft content (OSS) that have adopted BitTorrent distribution. But that's not the point of this post.

I want to quote an excerpt from Lessig's book Free Culture below, and ask you as a user of isoHunt and BitTorrent a basic question: What kind of file sharer are you? What brought you to using BitTorrent, and which of the following is the most common use you have when downloading and sharing with BitTorrent? Which use case is most important to you?

Quote:

File sharers share different kinds of content. We can divide these different kinds into four types.

A. There are some who use sharing networks as substitutes for purchasing content. Thus, when a new Madonna CD is released, rather than buying the CD, these users simply take it. We might quibble about whether everyone who takes it would actually have bought it if sharing didn't make it available for free. Most probably wouldn't have, but clearly there are some who would. The latter are the target of category A: users who download instead of purchasing.

B. There are some who use sharing networks to sample music before purchasing it. Thus, a friend sends another friend an MP3 of an artist he's not heard of. The other friend then buys CDs by that artist. This is a kind of targeted advertising, quite likely to succeed. If the friend recommending the album gains nothing from a bad recommendation, then one could expect that the recommendations will actually be quite good. The net effect of this sharing could increase the quantity of music purchased.

C. There are many who use sharing networks to get access to copyrighted content that is no longer sold or that they would not have purchased because the transaction costs off the Net are too high. This use of sharing networks is among the most rewarding for many. Songs that were part of your childhood but have long vanished from the marketplace magically appear again on the network. (One friend told me that when she discovered Napster, she spent a solid weekend "recalling" old songs. She was astonished at the range and mix of content that was available.) For content not sold, this is still technically a violation of copyright, though because the copyright owner is not selling the content anymore, the economic harm is zero--the same harm that occurs when I sell my collection of 1960s 45-rpm records to a local collector.

D. Finally, there are many who use sharing networks to get access to content that is not copyrighted or that the copyright owner wants to give away.

And based on comments here and elsewhere, one I'm reminded I've heard before, I venture to add a 5th case:

UPDATED wrote:

E. Those who use sharing networks to download what they already bought in another digital form. Aka. format shifting, for various reasons including DRM or for backup purposes. Examples include:

* You bought a copy-protected CD, and you can't conveniently transfer the songs to your iPod or MP3 player.
* Games that are so crippled by copy protection that you had trouble running the game you bought, but a downloaded copy would be free of such crippling DRM. 2649 1/5 stars offers amusing insight.
* Your HDDVD player stopped working, no player is sold anymore, and you want Bluray versions of HDDVD movies you bought.
* Software/games where the CD/DVD they came on have been too scratched up to play (by your children or whatever reason). Case of downloading a backup copy of digital goods you bought.

Free Culture's chapter on Piracy elaborates on the first 4 cases, you can read them there. Since the copyright owners are so fond of using the term piracy and calling you pirates, I believe it's important for you to know and discuss just what is piracy?

Posted by: IH
Comments: 208

Search results fixes, New ads [47]

Sun, 15 Mar 2009 03:31:57 GMT

Firstly, our search results are currently bugged with missing torrents, due to a software glitch. We are fixing this and should be corrected in no more than 2 hours.

As part of this glitch, we've upgraded our spam detectors against the ever increasing flood of spam torrents.

Secondly, we are testing a new ad format which you probably have noticed. It slides up from the bottom right corner. It doesn't show on every page, and it shows high quality advertising that should interest you. I've been wary of more intrusive ads like popups and interstitials (full page ads that you have to skip through), but advertising is doing badly in the current economy, and the slider I believe is a fair compromise.

I do want your feedback on the new ad format, it's why I'm posting this. Please tell us what you think, and I appreciate your understanding of why we are testing new ad formats. Your experience on search quality of isoHunt comes first as always.

UPDATE: A bug has been found and fixed, that caused some more empty search results pages.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 47

On legal spectacles [46]

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 06:23:59 GMT

With the TPB trial just wrapping up, some comments on our case and theirs.

Some have asked me what's going on with our case(s), with no update for a while. For our US case, there really hasn't been any news. We are still waiting on Judge Wilson to decide on MPAA's motion for summary judgment. Since it's taken so long (15 months and counting on this motion), I'm sure the Judge will make a careful opinion on this motion with many important issues raised at stake.

For our Canadian case, we are currently defending against CRIA's motion to convert our petition to a full action. It's disappointing to see CRIA wanting to unnecessarily complicate our well defined petition, in attempt to bog us down with time and money through messy discovery and in the process the court's time too. We are no doubt fighting this upcoming motion in about ~~April~~ March and will update on how that goes.

For TPB's trial, it's been amusing to see how poorly organized the prosecutors are and how weak is their expert witnesses in proving anything technical. And I'm slightly jealous their trial came before ours when our MPAA case started much earlier. But yesterday's arguments from the prosecution can I believe make or break their case. They point out that Google for example "works with rights holders to prevent piracy. TPB on the other hand constantly mocks rights holders." While we follow similar copyright policy as Google, there is big problems with our current copyright regimes and I wish the best for TPB. Because the copyright system is fundamentally broken, with terms lasting over 100 years and with almost no way to know what maybe copyright infringing, in what country and in what context of sharing, and what authorization for distribution rights holders have granted. If TPB win, it would perhaps be a sign that we can start pushing back for more fair and sane copyright.

UPDATE (CRIA motion):
I've tweeted the court meeting with CRIA lawyers, it's been covered by TorrentFreak and various Canadian media coverage, such as Ottawa Citizen and CTV.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 46

New Creative Commons Movie: Sita Sings the Blues! [17]

Wed, 04 Mar 2009 02:34:11 GMT

As featured recently on Roger Ebert's Blog :

Sita Sings the Blues
Directed, written, produced, designed and animated by Nina Paley
82 minutes
Animation
Color, stereo
2008

Synopsis:
Sita is a goddess separated from her beloved Lord and husband Rama. Nina is an animator whose husband moves to India, then dumps her by email. Three hilarious shadow puppets narrate both ancient tragedy and modern comedy in this beautifully animated interpretation of the Indian epic Ramayana. Set to the 1920's jazz vocals of Annette Hanshaw, Sita Sings the Blues earns its tagline as "the Greatest Break-Up Story Ever Told."

Sita Sings the Blues by Nina Paley is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States License.
Based on a work at www.sitasingstheblues.com.

The movie has recently been released as 480p, 720p, and 1080p mp4 files through archive.org; I have started them all as torrents:

NEW: 1080p mkv with FLAC audio (contains video identical to original 1080p version below)
1080p Version
720p Version
480p Version

Also it's available for streaming viewing on Google Video , in obviously far inferior quality (so I suggest using it just for previewing).
It's now available on Youtube in HD (just broken up into parts). The playlist with all 10 pieces ready to go is here:
http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=422DA8C3B574D836

Edit (IH): I think the fact that an interesting CC movie like this has to be broken up into 10 pieces for posting on youtube, says something about the efficacy of BitTorrent

Posted by: Falco98
Comments: 17

We are 6 years old! And on load issues.. [79]

Sun, 04 Jan 2009 22:35:08 GMT

We know about current server load issues and occasional code 500 server errors. Upgrades will be done in the next few days which should fix slow down and the occasional errors. Stay tuned.

Oh and hope you had a happy new year! And happy birthday to us, isoHunt is now 6 years old

(I don't remember which day I launched the site, but it was January 2003)

Posted by: IH
Comments: 79

Blender Releases New Free Open Source 3D Game [23]

Thu, 18 Dec 2008 22:59:12 GMT

The Blender Institute has just released a new project. After releasing under the Creative Common two awesome Pixar quality short subjects Elephants Dream and Big Buck Bunny (get it here in 720p or here in 1080p or just watch it here ), the Institute is now releasing Yo Frankie! , a fully free and open source 3D game under the Creative Common license, everything from the artwork to the code is freely re-usable and modifiable even commercially.

By running the game directly from Blender, you can even modify it and see what happens directly from the software, a nice way to learn how to do your own game.

To run the game, just download Blender for your OS and open the file "levels/start_menu.blend" from Blender, this file and all the needed ones are available from this isoHunt release . You can also support the project by buying the DVD of the game here .

That's not all, a Non Profit Organization called Freezing Moon is now using Blender to develop a free and open source MMORPG by a couple of years, so stay tuned...

Posted by: patcito
Comments: 23

JSON api, iPhone app, New Features [31]

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 00:00:50 GMT

Time for announcing some changes and additions to isoHunt.com, both visible and behind the scenes.

First, a treat for web programmers: we are releasing a new JSON interface to our search results, so you can create innovative new apps, widgets, mashups and frontends using our data. Think desktop widgets, Facebook apps, and iGoogle gadgets. Simple API docs follow this post in this comment. For users, what matters is the apps made using this, and here are 2 great examples.

1. iPhone search with uTorrent webui integration from Team Louish
This app searches isoHunt.com using our JSON interface, and displays results formatted for iPhones or similarly small sized screens, like Blackberry or other smartphones. If you installed uTorrent's WebUI and the iPhone variation, you can save its IP and port as a cookie on the web app, and you can click (or rather, finger) the blue circular icon next to any search result to send the torrent to your uTorrent for download. For iPhone/smartphone and uTorrent users, this is unbeatable. This lets you search for torrents wherever you are, and remotely start downloads on your uTorrent client at home quickly. You can see a sample search for ubuntu on the app here, or see link above for screenshots of the app in action on an iPhone.

For the uTorrent integration, you are perhaps wary of privacy issue in sharing your uTorrent webui's IP/port with a website. You should be. But in this case, looking at their HTML source, your webui's IP and port are stored as a cookie in your phone's browser, and the links for sending torrents to your uTorrent are generated client-side by Javascript. None of these touches any server, just your browser direct to your uTorrent webui. The search requests of course have to go to Team Louish's server which in turn hit our JSON api.

2. Vuze search template
This file adds isoHunt search results to Vuze's meta search. I you have Vuze (previously named Azureus) installed, this file would open in Vuze. I appreciate various user made templates before, but most of them didn't parse our search results quite right. This template uses our JSON interface and includes convenient, direct torrent download links in Vuze search. I've tried talking to the Vuze guys before on including isoHunt as a default search, but they have shown more interest in including search engines with poorer and more outdated results than they have shown us. Maybe you'll have better luck than me.

You can also find Vuze search templates for Torrentbox and Podtropolis here. Refer to this thread for discussion specific to the Vuze search templates.

For isoHunt site updates, we've added direct voting on your download history:

After registering and downloading .torrent files while logged in to isoHunt, you always had the option to save your download history for reference later. To further encourage community involvement in moderating torrents in our search results, we have added direct Feedback voting (+1 / -1) in your download history. You can see your download history as seen in sample in above screenshot, on the first page after logging in to isoHunt. If you are already logged in, click the Settings & History link at top right on isoHunt to go back to it.

You may also notice the "RSS feeds of your download history" link in the above screenshot, which we added a few weeks back. This gives you a private feed of your download history. One use of this is subscribe to your personal feed in your BitTorrent client. That way, whenever and wherever you click .torrent files on isoHunt while logged in, your BT client would pick up the latest from the feed and start downloading. Another way to remote download torrents from isoHunt, especially if you don't use uTorrent. Or perhaps you want to show your friends what you are downloading, by importing your RSS into your blog or Facebook wall. Your private feed is secure as long as you don't share its URL, or import it on where you don't want prying eyes from seeing them. Social networks may have enough privacy control to make this useful for you.

And to improve our references to indexed sites per torrent:

Previously, only 1 indexed site is linked on our torrent details pages, on a first indexed first shown basis. This is still the case, but under it, on mouse over the indexed link, you'll see all other sites from where we indexed the same .torrent file. The "find comments elsewhere" link after it would Google the torrent's unique info_hash for any further references to it, if we missed any.

By checking lists of sites where torrents originated, you have more safeguard against spam. For example, a ubuntu torrent, listed from torrent.ubuntu.com as seen in above screenshot, pretty much guarantees you are not getting a spam or fake torrent that's not what its filenames say it is. All the more reasons and ways you can use isoHunt as your first stop to search for torrents from anywhere, and you'll find all references to research further online. Props to Patcito who helped code most of these updates.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 31

Obama and Us [340]

Thu, 20 Nov 2008 19:33:09 GMT

News about Obama is everywhere, so I'm not going repeat much of them. But of particular importance to file sharing, Obama has always been big on net neutrality (WoW player as FCC co-chair!) and copyright policies. Even though I'm not a US citizen, he has my vote on the internet. And best wishes with fixing the US's economy, because it's kinda dragging down Canada too. Not nice.

In particular to this techie president, this picture from here takes the cake, among thousands taken of him:

Pacman and Apple, can he get any cooler? Too bad he may still have to give up his crackberry. Here's some more great pictures of his campaign.

And some news on Creative Commons related to Obama's central and noble theme for a more transparent and accountable government. The TV and radio show Democracy Now! has released all their shows under CC licensing. This is a big win for CC and in further fostering legal use of BitTorrent. The show has already released their content by BitTorrent, all of which are indexed here on isoHunt. Feel free to share this and get involved with politics! It's what Obama and Michael Moore would have wanted.

UPDATE: Forgot about this video. One of the most inspiring and well done, independent, political campaign videos I've seen, with original soundtrack. Video produced by MC Yogi

Posted by: IH
Comments: 340

Join the Copyfight! [290]

Sun, 09 Nov 2008 09:09:45 GMT

Since I've been sued by both the MPAA (Hollywood) and threatened by the CRIA (Canadian recording industry), I've talked about what's been happening with our cases. Our CRIA case has also recently received mainstream press attention by the Canadian Press and Globe & Mail. But the question is why? Why do they insist on suing their own customers? Why do they sue search engines like us, who make the internet more useful for everyone?

The problem lies in something fundamentally broken with the copyright system. A choice quote from Cory Doctorow's article on the "copyfight":

Quote:

So the natural inclination of anyone who is struck by a piece of creative work is to share it. And since "sharing" on the Internet is the same as "copying," this puts you square in copyright's crosshairs. Everyone copies. Dan Glickman, the ex-Congressman who now heads up the Motion Picture Association of America (as pure a copyright maximalist as you could hope to meet) admitted to copying Kirby Dick's documentary This Film is Not Yet Rated (a scorching critique of the MPAA's rating system) but excused it because the copy was "in [his] vault." To pretend that you do not copy is to adopt the twisted hypocrisy of the Victorians who swore that they never, ever masturbated. Everyone knows that they themselves are lying, and a large number of us know that everyone else is lying too.

When the head of the MPAA has to admit to copying the film that criticizes the very industry he represents, an industry group of lobbyists and litigators against such copying, it highlights an important fact beyond the obvious hypocrisy. The internet has completely changed the economics of sharing. When sharing equals copying on the internet and the direct cost of that sharing is effectively $0 (it doesn't cost you anything to share videos on Youtube or BitTorrent), it makes copyright infringement so easy that even Dan Glickman can do it. So easy that a mom like Stephanie Lenz can do it when she posted a video of her 13-month-old son dancing to Prince's music. And I mean no disrespect to them.

This is an age of rampant sharing and remixing, and if you can make the connection between sharing and culture as Doctorow has, you will see this war between rightsholders and consumers will never end and the rightsholders will never win. The band Girl Talk and Lessig and James Boyle and Terry McBride of Nettwerk and isoHunt all echo a common point: Remixing and sharing is good for culture, suing consumers and technologists who enable sharing is destructive for everyone. The internet is a more efficient information machine than the printing press or VCR ever was, and also a whole different animal. It's time the content industries learn to put it to better use as well, by discarding past notions of how business is done based on an economy of scarcity. In Star Trek, currency becomes irrelevant with virtually unlimited "copying" of physical objects with the Replicator. The internet is the Replicator of information. When a 13-month-old dances to Prince's music, copyright infringement is nowhere near his consciousness. It's an endorsement that he likes it, pure and simple.

I've said a number of times that I'm not against copyright, but copyright does need significant reform in the internet age. If all this rampant copying on BitTorrent and the internet has not made a dent in Hollywood's record earnings, why can't we all just get along without rabid lawsuits? Why can't they see that sharing and remixing is a human urge for culture, and when we share and remixes art, it's not a liability but an endorsement for the artist or author or producer?

When the majority of society has no ethical conviction of wrongdoing when they violate copyright law, it's not society that's wrong, it's the law. Because no one can really own ideas. Newton once said, "If I have seen further it is only by standing on the shoulders of Giants." It's how the arts and sciences progresses. We share, we inspire and we remix.

If you want to join the copyfight, simply share your thoughts by replying, share this post with your friends, and join isoHunt's Facebook group. With our pending lawsuit against the CRIA in our home country, we may need your voice real soon, especially if you are Canadian. For more on Copyfight and where the word came from, go here.

Update: Since this post is all about warm fuzzy sharing, I shared this post on Torrentfreak as a guest columnist. This post, along with everything I write on isoHunt.com, are published under the CC BY-SA license. Share on!

Update 2: For a book author's perspective, a most interesting response and discussion regarding my post on the Copyfight. ( Edit by SecretSquirrel: Having spoken to Rachel Caine via telephone, she echoed the sentiments on her livejournal. Please do give her posting a read, she makes some good points.)

Posted by: IH
Comments: 290

1.1 Petabytes of files on BitTorrent, network issues [30]

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 08:03:29 GMT

This kind of went unnoticed, but files contained in torrents indexed globally on isoHunt has past the 1 petabyte mark is is currently at about 1.1 PB. I think that says something about how BitTorrent has become a staple of content distribution, and a congratulations to all the seeders. Share on!

As for number of torrents indexed, here's an update to stats of our torrents index count, currently at 1.45 million:

Keep in mind again that our search index is not the same as most tracker sites, and a common misconception is that isoHunt.com is a tracker. As a search engine, we continually update our index from more than 400 other torrent sites we index, and at the same time, spam/fakes and old, inactive torrents are automatically pruned. That's why in the above graph you see some dips, where new torrents weren't indexed as fast as old torrents were pruned.

Speaking of spam and fakes, it is sad but a fact that with popularity, BitTorrent attracts a new flood of spammers in trying to advertise their websites or get their malware installed by unsuspecting users. It's a problem we take seriously, and since we added comments, tags and ratings to our search results (which you have used with great success), we worked on new ways to prune spam out of our index. You can of course help by more commenting, tagging and rating down torrents you find to be not what their filenames suggest or is blatant spam/malware. On your login page, if you have turned on the Download History Manager, you would see a list of .torrent files you've downloaded. If you completed downloads on them, I'm sure other users would appreciate your feedback on the authenticity of those torrents, just as you would find feedback by others useful before you download.

And I'm curious as to how bad you think is the torrents spam problem, and how bad is it on isoHunt.com. We can use your feedback on how we may improve quality of our search results.

On the login page, you may have already noticed also a new feature: friend invitations. In the spirit of peer to peer, invite your friends to join a new world of sharing and discovery with isoHunt and BitTorrent!

Another (temporary) issue we need your feedback on is connectivity issues for the past week. Either there's issue with our upstream router, or internet issues with routes from networks in reaching isoHunt.com. We saw particularly issues with Eastern Europe in reaching us, and our outgoing emails to certain domains were also affected. This may have been fixed now, but if you still can't reach isoHunt.com or after a few hours you still have not received your activation email on site registration, please comment here (if you have a way to obviously) or email admin at isohunt.com. Running traceroute from your command prompt to isohunt.com would be useful, as well as what what country and what ISP you are at.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 30

Canadian Election: lets talk politics [101]

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 03:45:09 GMT

Political debates are almost as hopeless as religious ones, so I've avoided them here in the past. But reading about the Conservatives' platform on copyright legislations, I'm compelled to speak up. To get my bias clear first: I'm Christian and I've been voting Conservatives for the last 2 elections. But unless they substantially change their platform, I will not vote for them this election and I urge Canadians reading this not to. Here's why.

From the Conservatives' platform:

Quote:

Dion (Liberals) wants to impose a massive carbon tax that will drive up the cost of everything and hurt families.

That is a lame and empty attack on a good idea. Living in BC, we've already implemented the carbon tax and our economy is doing just fine. Harper either doesn't understand what "revenue neutral" means or is just being conservative for the sake of being Conservative. I drive, and I'd gladly pay more on gas so we have greater incentives for the marketability of viable, mainstream electric cars sooner than later. Same goes for more non-carbon power plants. Strike 1 for the Conservatives.

And for the most important and relevant issue, copyright, the Conservatives show no intent to revise or drop bill C-61, and supports ACTA which is an even worse idea. They shown no support for Geist's copyright pledge, and have continued to show no interest in soliciting feedback from the Canadian public on C-61, a most important legislation since the internet regarding copyright and how we share and consume information. This is about the freedom of speech in the digital age. Strike 2 and out for the Conservatives.

Right now, it seems the Conservatives are leading the polls. But I know about 3.7 million Canadians visited isoHunt last month, which is more than 10% of Canada's population. So I ask all who read this to tell your Canadian friends to not be a slacker and vote on Oct. 14. I don't care which party you vote, just vote any party but the Conservatives.

Here are some more links to more information on election issues:
- Vote strategically and not just your favorite party. If there's a way to keep the Conservatives from having a majority govt, this is how. This site is an environmentalists' site but they have the exact same goal as we do with a fair copyright agenda. They have great polls data per riding, and recommendation so as to not have the oppositions split their votes. Must visit site.
- Latest election poll stats (updated Oct. 13)
- Election Notebook blog
- Liberals, Conservatives, NDP on twitter
- MPs growing support for Geist's copyright pledge (all non-Conservatives)
- Book author Atwood blasts Harper for his treatment of the arts

For the US election, discuss here instead, this thread is for Canadian election only. But then there isn't much to talk about is there, the debates are an one sided comedy.

UPDATE: Interesting video message from Jack Layton of the NDP to p2pnet. Quote: "Social networking sites, torrent sites, youtube... the truly interactive websites are... fundamental to making a democracy work." What a nice quote we can use to argue our case! He also touched on support for net neutrality. Torrentfreak has a write-up.

Also on issue of this site's neutrality and me "campaigning": raising awareness on copyright and cultural issues, which are facing more important changes than most other elections, that's what I'm really after. We are not endorsing any party. You don't have to agree with any of my politics and your freedom of speech is very much the issue I'm raising. This site, its treatment of links it indexes and comments posted on it has and will always remain neutral.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 101

"To promote the Progress of useful Arts" [4]

Tue, 07 Oct 2008 03:45:51 GMT

Today I read about some exciting news, on more independent artists in the USA standing up against traditional labels. Joining our Canadian leads, I believe the music industry is at a point of no return in an age where producing music on computers is now independently affordable, and distributing music has far great reach than was ever possible before the internet. As I wrote before, the record labels can either find some common ground in marketing and selling to the internet generation, or be left behind. Artists will continue to make music, it's what they do, and we will always have a demand for new and great music.

To any interested artists, join the FAC! Tell them we sent you

For more independent content, check out a video production by guys in Austria which features various indie artists. Here's what they have to say:

Quote:

Hello world. This is the first BitTorrent release of 'They Shoot Music - Don't They?'. We shoot music videos featuring artists we like at places we like. On the one hand having a strong cosmopolitic agenda, on the other hand being in love with the city we live in, we combine both: we glance across the borders and observe the microcosmos of a breathing city in the center of Europe. We don't care about the glamorous illusions and technical perfection that coat the typical music video productions these days. 'They Shoot Music - Don't They' is all about sharing those pure and intensive moments that make you feel what the essence of culture really is about.

Asking the folks at isohunt.com (thanks!) who made this spotlight possible had a specific reason. As one can imagine we produce and promote our videos with the approval of the artists. If you want to see it that way then we are a promotion tool of the music industry (we don't get paid though ^^). Every artist involved gave us a clearance for this Isohunt.com release. We strongly believe that there is a peaceful way of sharing and that technology such as search engines shouldn't be doomed for enabling people to share digital content. But ... as we in Austria like to say: There will be a lot of water running down the danube before a proper way is discovered.

Even if you can get free media quite easily these days please remember that the majority of artists are having a hard time paying their bills. We work together with quite a few of them and see most of them struggling. So if you like their work take an effort and spend a few bucks on their media, drop by at their shows and give them constructive feedback somewhere in the social network jungle. They deserve it.

Their debut video is posted here on isoHunt. Check it out, and expect more from thshmu in the future.

Another interesting development for video distribution is the legal dilemma with Moore's Slacker Uprising. Interesting and real problems many producers are facing. Since Moore's production company don't allow him from distributing his film outside N. America, I won't link to torrents which were originally posted on Moore's site itself, and I forbid you from searching for them here if you are not in N. America. The lawyers said so.

PS. title of this post is a paraphrase of part of the US constitution, summing up the essential purpose of IP in one sentence. The timelessness and elegance of language used in this document is admirable, and we forget the reason for copyright in the first place and how far it's been twisted.

UPDATE: thshmu noted that their videos can be directly previewed on http://theyshootmusic.com/ and his posted torrent is an archive of 54 of his videos rather than just one debut video.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 4

Common sense in the news [11]

Thu, 25 Sep 2008 23:42:20 GMT

Today's news I couldn't help but notice, with a rather large rash of incidents where common sense prevails against the big content industry. I'm a believer in fair copyright, and not a believer in creating laws just to benefit an aging business model that refuses to evolve to consumer demands. Declaring war against consumers is not the answer. Focusing on the reason why P2P is so popular in the first place is a good start.

White House opposes expansion of taxpayer funded DOJ copyright cops.
- http://arstechnica.com/news.ars/post/20080924-doj-to-senate-dont-make-us-be-big-contents-copyright-cops.html

European Parliament swings and strikes out the 3 strikes legislation.
- http://torrentfreak.com/european-parliament-says-no-to-three-strikes-law-080925/

RIAA loses $222K example verdict against Jammy Thomas.
- http://government.zdnet.com/?p=4040

The Pirate Bay wins court case against Italian blockade.
- http://torrentfreak.com/pirate-bay-wins-court-case-italian-block-lifted-080925/

Also important from a week ago:
Linking to P2P downloads declared LEGAL in Spain.
- http://torrentfreak.com/linking-to-p2p-downloads-confirmed-legal-in-spain-080919/

Posted by: Spike
Comments: 11

isoHunt sues CRIA on legality of search engines [107]

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 20:54:29 GMT

This is one of the hardest decisions I had to make, to sue one of the most powerful lobby and corporate conglomerates in Canada. But for sake of continuing operation and development of isoHunt, this is something we must do. I don't pretend to speak on behalf of all BitTorrent websites or users, but I speak to point out that with a lawsuit from CRIA hanging over our heads, we fight not just for our survival as an internet company of search engines and social networks, but also for other websites, from BitTorrent sites to larger search engines like Google, on which most of us have come to depend. The legal ramifications concerning search engines and linking here are far reaching.

For a better understanding of what brought us here, this is a brief history of our dealing with the CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association).

In October 2006, CRIA's anti-piracy department sent us a notice and takedown on certain songs. They included correct identification by URL's of .torrent links to files allegedly infringing their copyright. We took them down.

There was no further communication, until May 2008 when Mr. Sookman, counsel representing CRIA, issued cease and desist letters to isoHunt.com and our sister sites ( Torrentbox.com and Podtropolis.com ), as well as to our upstream ISP. The letters all used similar language, that our websites serve no other purpose but to infringe CRIA's copyrighted music. They harassed our ISP with accusations of hosting a den of thieves (my paraphrase). We pointed them to our copyright policy ( http://isohunt.com/dmca-copyright.php ), and that we have cooperated in the past in identification and takedown of links they wanted removed. We asked them in subsequent letters to identify links to their copyrighted files as we had done in 2006. They ignored our offers, and cited there's no "safe harbor" for a service provider like us and our copyright policy doesn't mean anything to them in Canada.

Here lies some great ironies. We have had cooperation from various music companies and associations in other countries in issuing notice and takedowns for links to their respective infringed content, some of which are the same international companies that CRIA represents. Some of their copyright agents have made blunders in misidentifying links, like requesting takedown of links that look very much like porn, based on colorful vocabulary in their filenames, or at least we were pretty sure were not music files based on some of their file extensions. But we move on after rejecting such obviously erroneous requests. But CRIA's blatant ignorance of their very own past takedown practices which happened to be proper and correct just because they want to sue us, illustrates the importance of ISP safe harbor provisions in the new bill C-61 for the survival of whole classes of internet websites and search engines.

No wonder why a group of prominent Canadian artists and labels formed the CMCC, broke out of CRIA and told them, "not in our names" ( http://www.musiccreators.ca/wp/?p=231 ). This is why Canadians who care about music should support artists in the CMCC group, those who doesn't want to sue their fans, those who are trying to find ways for fans to share in our new world online that can fairly compensate their work, and those who actually make good music. At least I'm a fan of some on the CMCC's artists list.

Before you think I'm trying to rally a riot against copyright, I want to reiterate our stance that we do believe in Imaginary Property (IP) because imagination takes effort, and realizing them through music or videos or games takes more effort, time and money. Copyright laws need reform for the 21st century, and my hope as a Canadian is in a substantially improved C-61. I defer to Geist's blog ( http://www.michaelgeist.ca/ ) on pointing out what's wrong with C-61 in its current form. All Canadians who appreciates how copyright affects them should support reform for a more fairly balanced bill C-61. Geist's website has information on how Canadians can help reform C-61.

Now, before the critics say isoHunt.com is full of links to copyright infringing content and we should just pack up and leave. To which I'll summarize what our petition to the BC court is all about. isoHunt is a search engine of BitTorrent sites, and our sister sites are indices of direct user contributed .torrent links. None of the pieces of files exchanged over BitTorrent pass through our servers, they are exchanged over external P2P networks. We serve cached .torrent links to such files on P2P networks. Some of these files maybe copyright infringing, some aren't. But given the ridiculously long copyright terms in most countries of the world (which does differ) and that all creative media are copyrighted by default (in many countries), large majority of files exchanged on the internet would be copyrighted. That includes Linux ISO images and your videos of friends and family doing whacky things. The real question is are they infringing against the wishes of respective copyright owners. We make and run a great search engine here at isoHunt, but we unfortunately do not have the technology to mind read what are the wishes of all copyright owners, or who they are to begin with in association with the tens of millions of files on BitTorrent, to which we only indexes metadata links and not actual content files. Whatever copyright laws or safe harbor provisions provided in different countries, the only sensible and technically possible thing to do we've found is to take down links to allegedly infringing content only upon request and verification. This part of the US's DMCA is one which has much foresight and makes sense. (although not perfect obviously, it should add provisions for monetary punishment on erroneous notices as we receive plenty of ignorant or erroneous takedown requests and there isn't much recourse about them, but that's another topic)

The bottom line is we developed a search engine for BitTorrent protocols when it was still in its infancy, and even now it has not yet gained full mainstream use. We are on the cutting edge of emerging internet technologies, and I ask reasonable people of Canada and whoever else reading this to accept that it is not my wish for my websites and search engines to infringe rights of others. As all emerging technologies go, increasingly beneficial usage of BitTorrent will emerge with more widespread adoption by various parties. I'm referring to the US's Sony Betamax decision here; as the VCRs have been allowed to develop, enabling a new industry of videos playable at home, I plead that emerging technologies like BitTorrent and our web services be allowed that same chance to develop.

Attached are 2 documents we have filed at the BC court last Friday, one is our petition and the other my affidavit. The petition is more of an overview of facts, my affidavit is the supporting evidence. We petition the court preemptively for its guidance and clarification of our rights as an internet company, in hope that by laying out all the facts here early, we can make it easier for the court to cut to the heart of the legal issues. In some ways, this is a condensed summation of the core issues with our other MPAA lawsuit (which is still pending a decision on a Motion for Summary Judgment in the US).

Media inquiries can be mailed to media at isohunt.com. I understand that some news and comments have already been circulating online regarding this, hopefully I have cleared up some points.

UPDATE: To all of you who have voluntarily donated towards our obviously increased legal expenses without me even asking for them, my sincere thanks and gratitude. It shows that users of BitTorrent and isoHunt sensibly understands that not all things are free, that we are not here to pick a fight with copyright owners, and how much you care about isoHunt. But whether you are able to donate or not, most importantly we can use your simple support. Especially to Canadians, that you spread the word in raising awareness of the issues at stake concerning your ability to search, and in what ways we as consumers can do with electronics and media we buy. Please support our undoubtedly long legal battle, and in reforming bill C-61.

Here's a list of interesting discussions and stories regarding our case on other websites:
- http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-sues-the-cria-to-legalize-bittorrent-sites-080905/
- http://digg.com/tech_news/isoHunt_Sues_the_CRIA_to_Legalize_BitTorrent_Sites_2
- http://tech.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/09/07/239245
- http://www.p2pnet.net/story/16945

---
Gary Fung, aka. IH
President, isoHunt Inc.

Posted by: IH
Comments: 107

Happy (belated) Sysadmin day! [18]

Sat, 26 Jul 2008 07:49:36 GMT

Yep, I completely missed it... http://www.sysadminday.com was yesterday... I was so busy having fun on mine that it just slipped past me. Well, to all the Systems Administrators that visit, happy late SAAD!

Posted by: SecretSquirrel
Comments: 18