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Is Vivendi Universal, EMI, Warner Music and Sony Music’s CRIA (Canadian Recording Industry Association of America) about to make Google, Yahoo illegal in Canada? In the middle of it all is isoHunt, the Canadian BitTorrent and P2P search engine owned by Gary Fung (right) which had the temerity to refuse to roll over when the CRIA said so. Instead, it become the first such site to go from defense to attack in the online file-sharing wars. Now, the isoHunt vs The Big 4 court case in British Columbia, “has the potential to drastically change the Canadian Internet landscape” by making search engines illegal, says the Ottawa Citizen. The question before the British Columbia Supreme Court is, if a site like ISOHunt allows people to find a pirated copy of Watchmen or The Dark Knight, is it breaching Canadian copyright law? “It’s a huge can of worms,” said David Fewer, acting director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic at the University of Ottawa. “I am surprised that this litigation has gone under the radar as much as it has. I do think this is the most important copyright litigation going on right now.” isoHunt boasts more than 20 million regular users, says the story. After receiving numerous legal threats from CRIA, the B.C.-based company decided to take matters into its own hands. In September, the company filed a petition with the B.C. court asking a judge to rule on whether ISOHunt was in breach of Canadian copyright law. The case was heard last week. In his argument, ISOHunt’s lawyer Arthur Grant … used Google to show the judge how the world’s most popular search engine can be used to find many of the same questionable files available on ISOHunt. “Anybody can. Do it yourself,” he said. “ISOHunt is a search engine and it operates no differently than Google. The difference is Google searches every file type under the sun.” As is Standard Operating Procedure with any of the Big 4 extortion units, the CRIA wants to drag the case out and the judge agreed to a full court hearing, says the Ottawa Citizen, adding: “The litigation will mark the second court battle that ISOHunt finds itself fighting. The company is currently locked in a bitter dispute with the Motion Picture Association of America over similar copyright issues. “The company has repeatedly argued that much like case of Betamax versus Universal Studios, ISOHunt cannot be deemed illegal simply because it has the potential to be used for questionable purposes. In 1984, courts in the U.S. ruled that people can use their VCRs to record TV shows and that the manufacturers of the VCRs cannot be held liable for copyright infringement.”
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Topic: Will isoHunt case make Google illegal? (Read 669 times)
