Canadian Press features a story on the MPAA lawsuit against Vancouver-based Isohunt.com.
Canadian Press on IsoHunt Suit
7 Comments
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I always get a chuckle out of stories li
The business is in Canada, the owner is Canadian and living here. So why would a US court have jurisdiction? What sites like this provide is a library of catalogs. Does it facilitate the illegal sharing of copyrighted material? If the courts say that it does, then Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, and the owners/operators of other search engines better get ready for lawsuits.
They’re just going through the motions. It doesn’t actually mean anything to anyone except shareholders, and the unlucky few (very few) that face a potential legal battle. It’s certainly not going to stop filesharing, illegal or otherwise.
Agreed they are going through the motions, my question here is why they would think that US courts have jurisdiction. In addition, if the MPAA were to win the suit, would it not set the precedent that a non-US resident business could be sued or charged in US courts for their online dealings with an American? For instance, selling them Cuban cigars?
Jim R
And if the US thinks it has jurisdiction on foreign servers, then it is only logical that the reverse should also be true. E.g. Germany charging the US operators of a US server with their equivalent of hate crimes because the server hosts material denying the Holocaust. Perhaps Canada could charge US gun manufacturers for “inducing” Canadians to buy/obtain/want handguns.
Eo Nomine
“why would a US court have jurisdiction?”
My understanding is that IsoHunt’s servers were originally located in the US, and then were moved to Canada, which is why US courts have jurisdiction
Yep, after trolling through their website, I found a reference that they moved the servers to Canada in January of 2007 from the US. That could allow the US government to claim jurisdiction for the suit laid in 2006. The CP article never indicated that the servers had been hosted in the US, in fact it implied that they were in his home (at least according to the way that I read the article).
READ YOUR LAW BOYS
NO
if you are a canadian there was a law passes in 2003-4
that states what you do on the internet canuck law applies. exmaple is if i were to host virus code on servers in tiawan , i would be charged as per canuck law.
so this is 100% smoke and mirrors.
In past it would have been harmful to do things out there but i see that in a way this works better, he could host them there and claim that law as long as he is a canadian citizen.