Judge: isoHunt P2P Copyright Dispute Deserves Full Trial

Authored by Mark Hefflinger on March 13, 2009 - 9:16am.

Toronto - A Canadian Supreme Court Judge has denied BitTorrent search engine isoHunt's request for a ruling that it does not infringe copyrights, and must submit to a full trial should it choose to proceed in its case against the Canadian Record Industry Association (CRIA), Billboard reported.

"[The judge] just thinks the issues are too complicated and consequences far reaching legally and technically, and a full trial is more appropriate for discovering all documents," isoHunt owner Gary Fung told TorrentFreak.

Judge Victor Curtis also notably compared the site to a gun dealer, who would be liable on some level if he or she knew a gun sold to a customer would be used in a murder.

IsoHunt had hoped to win a declaratory ruling as a pre-emptive action, knowing that the record industry was poised to file copyright infringement claims against it.

The company argued that the site performs searches for .torrent files that could just as easily be conducted on Google or other search engines.

Related Links:
http://snipurl.com/dr035 (Billboard)

http://torrentfreak.com/isohunt-takes-on-the-cria-in-court-090311/

http://snipurl.com/dr27m (DMW previous coverage)

http://isohunt.com