If Internet censorship is good enough for China it’s good enough for the USA as recent rulings on copyright law have demonstrated to peer-to-peer (p2p) file sharing sites like Limewire and BitTorrent portals like IsoHunt.

At issue is the concept of secondary liability for enabling copyright infringement.   Sites like IsoHunt do not store files, copyrighted or otherwise, but they do provide connectivity between strangers who share copyrighted movies, music, software applications  as well as non-copyrighted information.

The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is the guardian of copyrights for the movie industry, and IsoHunt are at the center of the fray.  The party of the first part has sued the party of the second part for being enablers of a world-wide file sharing party among parties of the third part.  The MPAA won but exactly what they won isn’t very clear because our court system needs to split hairs into tinier parts. (more…)