MPAA Wins Major Victory Over isoHunt

The popular BitTorrent search engine, isoHunt will indefinitely shut its doors within the next week. After several years of legal battles between the website and the Motion Picture Association of America, Gary Fung, isoHunt’s owner has agreed to a $110 million dollar settlement.

The settlement which was issued Thursday also states that Mr. Fung will close other sites such as Podtropolis, TorrentBox and Edtk-it.com, which all redirect to isoHunt.

“Today’s settlement is a major step forward in realizing the enormous potential of the internet as a platform for legitimate commerce and innovation,” said Chris Dodd, the MPAA’s chairman. “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.”

The legal battle between isoHunt and major studios began in 2006. However, in March of this year, a three-judge panel of the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that, isHunt does not deserve protection under U.S. copyright laws. Fung claimed that he personally was not abusing copyright infringement and isoHunt simply was a search engine to provide users links.

The appeals court did not agree with Fung and noted the amount of pirate links appearing on his site along with features such as, “Box Office Movies” that users could be directed towards direct downloads.

According to Alexa.com, isoHunt was ranked 426th in most-visited sites. The closure of isoHunt is bringing a major relief to many copyright owners. With over 44 million peers frequenting the site, it created an easy portal for individuals to easily download any material they desired. DMCA Force encourages copyright holders to contact us so we can help create an effective plan that will put an end to piracy and your original content.