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Tag: IsoHunt

  • IsoHunt Is Back From The Dead… Sort Of

    IsoHunt Is Back From The Dead… Sort Of

    Earlier this month, IsoHunt, one of the world’s largest torrent trackers, shut down after settling a seven year lawsuit with the MPAA. There were efforts to archive all of IsoHunt upon the news, but founder Gary Fung killed the site earlier than planned to thwart those efforts. Now an entirely new team has resurrected the site in its entirety.

    TorrentFreak reports that a carbon copy of IsoHunt is now online at isohunt.to. The new site has nothing to do with the original site as it was brought back by a team that feels the site was a “file-sharing icon.” The team confirmed just as much in a post on the new IsoHunt under the title of “IsoHunt is back!”

    Hey everyone! IsoHunt is back online! It’s the same old isoHunt from the outside but very different from the inside. We have nothing in common with the isoHunt Inc. that made the original website. We proudly copied it and are happy to share. Isn’t that what we’re all here for?

    Feel free to search and download torrents like you used to. We’ll try to bring some of the old features back so we can recreate everything together.

    So, how similar is the new IsoHunt compared to the one one? The team behind it tells TorrentFreak that they have rescued about 75 percent of the original IsoHunt’s torrent database, and that they’re trying to bring more back online. They also might be able to bring back user comments, but it looks like the forums and user profiles will not be coming back.

    The death of IsoHunt was a big win for the MPAA in its tireless crusade to remove all file-sharing sites from the Internet, but its return is a powerful reminder that the the Internet doesn’t tolerate forced censorship. Even if what the site is doing is deemed illegal by the justice system, somebody on the Internet will ensure that it survives. That has happened here and it will happen again if the MPAA forces this new version of IsoHunt to shut down.

    In short, we may just have a new Pirate Bay-style game of whac-a-mole here, folks.

    [Image: IsoHunt.to]

  • IsoHunt Settles With MPAA, Will Shut Down

    IsoHunt was mine, and presumably many others, first run in with torrents and file sharing. Many have moved on, but the MPAA just couldn’t leave it alone. After launching a lawsuit against the site in 2006, the site’s founder, Gary Fung, and the MPAA went back and forth in court for more than 6 years. Now it’s all over and Fung didn’t win.

    Wired reports that Fung has reached a settlement with the MPAA in which he’ll pay $110 million in damages. As part of the settlement, he is also shutting the site down for good. The site, which currently has over 13 million active torrents, isn’t down just yet, but Fung has seven days to shut it down.

    With the announcement of the settlement, MPAA chairman Chris Dodd said that bullying a file sharing site into a settlement that it can’t possibly afford is somehow a win for innovation:

    “Today’s settlement is a major step forward in realizing the enormous potential of the internet as a platform for legitimate commerce and innovation. It also 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.”

    Now, I’m not saying that piracy is innovation, but Dodd’s statement is like the pot calling the kettle black. The MPAA chairman singing the praises of the Internet as a bastion of innovation for the film industry is disingenuous as the group he oversees has done everything in its power to resist the future that file sharing gave users in instant gratification.

    In fact, a study from earlier this week found that the film industry is to blame for piracy, not file-sharing sites. Out of the top 10 most pirated films over the last three weeks, not a single one was available via a legal streaming service. Consumers demand instant gratification in the Internet era, and streaming is the easiest way to deliver that. Sure, some new films are available for digital purchase, but the hoops one has to jump through to purchase and watch said films make piracy the much more appealing option.

    I’m not saying all this to defend IsoHunt, nor do I defend other file sharing sites like The Pirate Bay. What I do defend is the consumer, and the MPAA alongside other other copyright maximalist groups are doing the consumer no favors by going after file sharing sites. All their doing is desperately clinging to a business model that should have died over a decade ago. If they really cared about innovation, they would have fully embraced services like Netflix while reaching out to their biggest fans who usually happen to also be the biggest pirates.

    Oh, and as for Fung’s next move, he has submitted a petition for Writ of Certiorari to the Supreme Court. If it ends up like other file sharing cases, the SCOTUS will kick it back to the lower courts. We might get lucky, however, as Fung feels that IsoHunt is a search engine and that this ruling will affect services like Google and Bing as well.

    [Image: isohunt/Facebook]