Talk:Wikinews interviews Gary Fung from isoHunt

Original Reporting
The interview e-mail - On Fri, 24 Feb 2006 15:59:07 -0800, Nathan Carter  wrote:

> Hi Gary, > Thanks for your paricipation. What I will do before I publish the > article is send you a copy so you can ensure that eveything is correct. > 1. How long have you been running isohunt and it's sister sites?

isoHunt.com Since Jan. 2003. TorrentBox.com I got from my friend Hohead because he didn't want to run it anymore.

> 2. Why did you start them?

For fun, and to learn web programming (PHP and Mysql). Also a web search engine for P2P networks has not been done, and would be useful.

> 3. I read on your site that you are yet to receive formal notification > of the lawsuit, how did you find out? How did you react?

I found out first from Mike at Slyck.com, who have received letters of the press release, along with other news outlets like CNet. Within a few hours all the news sites posted about it.

> 4. Do you feel it is appropriate for the MPAA to publically announce > that they have commenced action against your sites and others before you > even receive notification?

Yes, although not surprising. Factually speaking, industry associations like the MPAA often uses the threat of pending lawsuits to intimidate to-be defendants, and it serves their purpose of spreading FUD to the public at large.

> 5. Have you ever received a takedown notice from any company in > accordance with the DMCA?

At least once a day, often many times a day. I've lost count of how many takedown requests we've received now, it would be at least in the hundreds if not a thousand. We have a thorough copyright policy outlining our stance, compliance and procedures: http://isohunt.com/dmca-copyright.php. Some of them come back and actually thank us with satisfaction for our prompt processing. For others, indie content producers like TV show producers, we actually talk to them about using BitTorrent to aid their distribution. And such partnership is in the works.

> 6. If you have received a take down notice, how do you go about dealing > with them?

We verify their authenticity, whether identified works are within their copyright, and disable them if found to be aiding in possible copyright infringement.

> 7. What was your response to the letters sent to you by the MPAA a year ago?

I already posted my last reply to the series of letter on our site: http://isohunt.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=9273&highlight=mpaa

They have not followed up after that, until now.

> 8. Do you think the service you provide is any different to that of > major search engines such as Google and Yahoo?

No. We are all search engines, only designed for different markets. "Torrents" for example are metadata pointers that describe and link to resources on BitTorrent swarms. Google and isoHunt for example are different only in forms of links and types of data they index. Both serve the purpose of organizing information on open networks on the internet (WWW vs. P2P), and making them useful and searchable.

> Is there anything else you would like to see published?

If you like, you can see the other interview I did with Slyck.com: http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=679

> If there is anything that you can't or do not want to answer please > leave it. > Cheers, > Nathan.

Protected edit request - related news and crosswiki linking
MPAA launches seven lawsuits against torrent, ed2k and usenet sites should be listed as related news (it is mentioned in the intro to the interview and occurred a month prior). Also, First mention of isoHunt should crosslink to isoHunt. JoshuaZ 13:27, 3 November 2007 (UTC)

✅ Jcart1534 14:10, 3 November 2007 (UTC)