BitTorrent launches torrent search engine
BitTorrent, Inc. founder Bram Cohen announced today that he is launching a search engine to focus on finding torrent files. According to a report in Yahoo!News, "the goal is to get every single torrent on the Internet indexed," and as of today, 60,000 torrent files had been indexed.
While BitTorrent, Inc. still appears to be in donation mode, this comes on the heels of BitTorrent releasing a tracker-less version of its file-sharing software, and just a short bit after the MPAA's press release about illegal copies of "Revenge of the Sith" being made available through BitTorrent. So don't think BitTorrent is not in the cross hairs - just because the MPAA has only sued tracker sites so far. While the MPAA waits for June to find out what the Supreme Court will do with the law of contributory infringement in Grokster, if anything, BitTorrent makes its move with a search engine that ostensibly is relying on DMCA safe harbors for "information location tools" under Section 512(d) of the Copyright Act to avoid infringement liability.
In order to qualify for the search engine safe harbor, the search engine must not have the right and ability to control the infringing activity, and must not have knowledge or reason to know of the infringing activity. Upon obtaining such knowledge, the search engine must act promptly to disable access to the infringing material. So it will remain to be seen whether the MPAA tries to challenge whether the search engine has reason to know of infringing activity, based on infringing usage of torrent files. Or whether the MPAA will engage in an on-going notice and take-down battle with them. We expect there's a lot more to come here from both sides.
Cathy Kirkman is a partner at Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati in Palo Alto, California. Her practice focuses on intellectual