Popular Vancouver File Sharing Site Shuts Down

The MPAA, which represents most of the major Hollywood studios, first challenged isoHunt in 2006

The popular search engine for pirated content will shut down after agreeing to pay $110-million fine

Vancouver resident Gary Fung agreed to shut down his popular platform for distributing pirated content, isoHunt, and pay a $110-million fine after settling a seven-year legal dispute with the Motion Picture Association of America.
 
A search engine for BitTorrent files, the website allowed users to find and download a large variety of copyrighted material, including music, movies and software.
 
Founded by the former engineering student a decade ago, Fung’s isoHunt.com has been in a legal battle with the MPAA, which represents Walt Disney Studios, Paramount Pictures and Sony Pictures Entertainment, since 2006.
 
The studios first won an important victory earlier this year when an appeals court in California sided with the studios and found that that the site was promoting copy right infringement.
 
The site was served an injunction in 2009 by a US federal court, but continued to operate as its servers were in Canada. Under the settlement Isohunt will shut down by October 26.
 
In a blog post Fung said that he was “sad to see his baby go,” and in a separate statement he said: “I’ve done the best I could pushing the social benefits of BitTorrent and file sharing, the searching and sharing of culture itself, but it’s time for me to move on to new software ideas and projects.”
 
Isohunt.com was the 423rd-most visited website on the Internet according to web ranking site Alexa.