James Delahunty
17 Jun 2010 0:30
IsoHunt attorney Ira Rothken said the search engine has asked a federal appeals court to block a lower court's injunction that could force the site down. The takedown order was given by a U.S. District Court in May. Judge Stephen Wilson said that IsoHunt is an unlawful avenue to free, copyrighted movies and television shows. Wilson said he would not stay enforcement of the injunction unless ordered to do so by a federal appeals court.
IsoHunt, which gets 30 million unique monthly visitors, asked the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco to block the takedown order. It accuses the District Court's injunction of being too broad. One issue of concern is a mandated removal of "searches" from the site. The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sent a list of keywords for the block, which include the number 10, and the word Dracula, for example.
"One person's copyrighted Wizard of Oz is another person's public domain work," Rothken said to Wired. "The motion picture studios do not have a monopoly on names on things. That is where the injunction is violating the First Amendment." Rothken said the MPAA should instead provide URLS or hashes which can positively identify an infringing link.
Rothken said that even if the court does not immediately intervene and block the injunction, it is unlikely that IsoHunt will go down any time soon. "Depending on what happens, there may or may not be proceedings to interpret the injunction in the trial court," he said.