Isohunt closed down

[Retro]

IsoHunt shuts early to prevent archiving, owner Gary Fung rickrolls fans - News - Gadgets & Tech - The Independent

IsoHunt shuts early to prevent archiving, owner Gary Fung rickrolls fans
Popular torrenting site IsoHunt has lost a seven-year court battle with the MPAA

Popular torrenting website IsoHunt has completed its shut down this week following a court settlement with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) announced last Thursday.

The court case began seven years and ended last Thursday with the site’s owner, Gary Fung, agreeing to pay $110 million (£68m) to the group of film studios including Twentieth Century Fox and Disney.

Court documents obtained by the BBC have indicated that Mr Fung and his company will only be able to pay between $2m and $4m of the $110m fine.
The shut-down of the website had originally been planned for the evening of 22 October, but an early closure was initiated to stop “rogue archivists” creating a back-up of the torrent directory.

The homepage of the site was replaced with a post written by Fung titled “Initiating Self Destruct”, with Fung explaining that “We are shutting down isoHunt services a little early. I’m told there was this Internet archival team that wants to make historical copy of our .torrent files.”

Speaking to TorrentFreak the archivists noted that the aim had to been to preserve the metadata surrounding the files (including comment threads and user IDs) as a historical document, rather than the torrents themself. ArchiveTeam member ‘joepie91’ has reported that the group were still able to collect 242GB of data before the site was closed.

Mr Fung was accused by the MPAA of inducing the pirating of films and TV shows. Fung defended himself by saying that his site did not host any pirate material although it did index where such material could be found.

“[The] truth is about 95% of those .torrent files can be found off Google regardless and mostly have been indexed from other BitTorrent sites in the first place,” said Mr Fung in a statement from IsoHunt.

“It's been an adventure in the last 10.5 years working on isoHunt, a privilege working with some of the smartest guys I've worked with, and my life won't be the same without it. For what I'm working on next, please look up my blog on Google and follow me there. Because as the Terminator would say with a German accent, ‘I’ll be backkk.’ – Gary Fung.”

Fung then posted a link to a video titled “ Terminator Salvation - Newly Release Trailer” although users who clicked the link found themselves listening to Rick Astley’s 1987 hit ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’.






From Wikipedia...

On October 17, 2013 Variety.com announced the website isoHunt would shut down by Oct. 23, 2013, as part of a settlement in a massive copyright infringement suit filed by Hollywood studios, agreeing to pay $110 million for claims that the site induced the violation of copyrighted movies and TV shows although isoHunt never hosted any content. The settlement terms included a $110 million judgment against isoHunt and its owner, Gary Fung, ending a seven-year legal battle over its operations.[19] According to court documents cited by the BBC, Fung's company will likely be able to pay only between two and four million dollars though.[20] The site shutdown on 21 October 2013, 2 days earlier than originally announced, leaving just a small note from Gary Fung and a link to a YouTube "trailer for the movie Terminator Salvation" that is actually a Rickroll.



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The past few days the site just hasn't come up. I really liked this site as it didn't have too many ads and seemed to have everything. By the way, rickroll refers to sending a person to that famous Rick Ashley song, 'Never gonna give you up' from a link with a different title. You think you are getting something else but you get Rick. It's done in with a lot different singers besides Rick Ashley but I guess his song was the first to be used this way.

[bsnub]

A shame. I used isohunt in the early days. Fuck the MPAA.

[Jofrey]

Too much crap on Isohunt in my experience.

As long as we have PirateBay things will be ok.

[harrybarracuda]

Always used to amaze me that someone would post an obvious fake and tens of thousands of idiots would download it nonetheless and then fill the comments fields with "*&%$ing fake!".

[Necron99]

Are we going to see the end of torrents? Or will a new tech rise to replace them?

I'm amazed that places like Rapidshare haven't taken a hit yet.

[harrybarracuda]

Are we going to see the end of torrents? Or will a new tech rise to replace them?

It would require global legislation, which probably won't happen in our lifetimes.

This is why the US are so keen to take overall control of t'interwebnet.

[WujouMao]

Isohunt may of closed down, but that didn't stop people from resurfacing it. You can read the whole story on torrent freak.

As for isohunt, go to isohunt.to

The page looks the same as it did last time, although it ain't run by Gary Fung.