Goodbye to 'ISOhunt' - torrent search site
 

BitTorrent search site IsoHunt will shut down, pay MPAA $110 million | Ars Technica

isoHunt, a search engine for BitTorrent files founded more than a decade ago, has agreed today to shut down all its operations worldwide. The company, founded by Canadian Gary Fung, has also accepted a judgment that it must pay the movie studios that sued it $110 million. It's not clear how much of that the studios will actually be able to collect.

Fung gave up his long legal fight just weeks from having to defend his site in federal court; a jury trial was scheduled to start on November 5 in a Los Angeles federal court. Earlier court rulings had already determined that Fung was liable for "inducing" copyright infringement, so the court trial would have largely been about damage control. The MPAA had stated studio lawyers would have sought as much as $600 million had the case gone to trial.

On the US version of isoHunt, Fung had already agreed to filter out MPAA content when it showed up. Despite that, it continued to be a huge site. IsoHunt claimed to have 44.2 million peers, and 13.7 million active torrents, according to the MPAA.

isoHunt argued that it was solely a neutral search engine and had never directly copied the illegal content. But that defense failed isoHunt, as it has generally failed to defend peer-to-peer file-sharing sites in the years since the 2005 MGM v Grokster ruling. A federal judge and a panel of appeals judges agreed that Fung had "induced" others to infringe copyright. Fung had "red flag" knowledge that there was infringing content on his site. He promoted the fact that popular TV shows and movies were there to get more ads.

It's a long-awaited vindication for the MPAA.

"[This settlement] sends a strong message that those who build businesses around encouraging, enabling, and helping others to commit copyright infringement are themselves infringers and will be held accountable for their illegal actions," MPAA chairman Chris Dodd said in a statement.

While the lawsuits take a long time to come to fruition, the entertainment industry has been pitching no-hitters when it comes to suing websites where peer-to-peer technology is used to trade copyrighted files. Napster, Grokster, KaZaa, and Limewire are the biggest tombstones in a growing graveyard of file-sharing websites. None of them were able to avoid liability in court, and many paid hefty settlements. Limewire, for example, paid the RIAA $105 million.

It's only the user-generated content sites that have been able to use the DMCA Safe Harbor defense that isoHunt tried, but failed, to use. Video-sharing site Veoh, for instance, beat Universal Music when it was found to be protected by Safe Harbor—but the company went bankrupt in the process. YouTube has spent $100 million fighting a copyright lawsuit brought by Viacom, which is still being litigated.

good thing I dont use torrent sites anymore.... :troll:

Won't be missed, they didn't have much in the past year or so anyway. Piratebay for all your needs :troll:

RIP

bummer....although I have moved to piratebay recently...i still found iso to be pretty good.

I always used ISOhunt and PirateBay as my backup for casual things.

Was convenient - I always just punched in "isohunt.com/(insert search term)" into the address bar

It just baffles me how much attention this Gary Fung individual wanted when he began running Isohunt 10 years ago. His face was plastered everywhere, like he wanted everyone to know who he was. I remembered Global News did a news story about him, and he was in front of the news camera, discussing about his success, smiling and looking like the biggest nerd. When you're treading in the grey area, the last thing you want is for law enforcement to know who you are. But this dude's ego got the best of him and he deserves what he's getting now.

I never liked Isohunt, I was always a fan of thepiratebay, mininova, and suprnova.

KAT and PB are still around for public trackers. All the best private torrent sites are still around.

...RIP Oink.

no discussion about trackers/torrents period! :derp::admin:

its 2013. why do people still use torrents anyway.

What's your alternative?

im gonna guess he uses XDCC/Fserve on IRC.

Way less user friendly than Torrents.

Guess a lot of people saw this coming for Gary

He is a family friend from church

MLM?

Direct downloads have become very popular an are faster since you start watching as it downloads.

Direct downloads are so simple a chimp could do it plus you can stream it so you don't even have to wait.

Usenet is another alternative
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Still a ton of torrent sites out there, i never really used ISOhunt

You mean like Depositfiles and such? Don't those cost money? Free to start but if you want high speed, you need an account?

^ Those sites are so slow. It's not worth it. If I need to pay, I rather pay for newsgroups.

im predicting piratebay to be next fuuuuu

They are not that slow. it takes less that 20 minutes to download a 30 minute minus the commercials TV show and you can start watching as soon as you start downloading.

PB has already been taken down in the past...

...and brought right back up lol

Every torrent I download maxes out my 1.5MBps (not Mb) bandwidth. 30 minute shows in standard def take 2-3 minutes to download and cost nothing to download. 10 minutes to download 720p Top Gear...30 minutes after it airs.

Yes, you can stream but I don't know of any of those DD sites that aren't annoying or cost money apart from Mediafire.

I believe TPB has some clout behind them now with the Pirate Party getting two members into European parliament. They're based in Sweden.

you can stream torrents too before it completes
decent newsgroup is subscription based
direct download is litered with ads with wait times and slow speed

torrent is still the best free download...only PITA is leaving your computer on to seed and worrying about ratios

Newsgroup all went to hell when nzb matrix went down.