Despite efforts to minimise piracy, vast numbers still illegally downloaded TV series The Walking Dead
IsoHunt, a popular website offering BitTorrents and P2P of mostly pirated material, is to shut down following a court settlement.
The site's owner, Canadian Gary Fung, has agreed to pay $110m (£68m) to the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).
MPAA chairman Chris Dodd said the move was a "major step forward" for legitimate commerce online.
In a blog post, Mr Fung said: "It's sad to see my baby go."
The site is currently still online, but will soon be shut. It is one of the most popular sites of its kind on the internet.
Initiating Self Destruct
This
is it. 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, I'm honoured that people think our site is
worthy of historical preservation. But 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. So I might as
well do a proper send-off to you dear isoHunt users, before final
shutdown sequence on Tuesday. 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 this
journey. 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
A group of companies, including Disney, Paramount and
Twentieth Century Fox, accused the site of wilfully infringing copyright
by listing millions of popular movies and TV programmes - in a court
battle that has lasted for more than seven years.
Now Mr Fung has agreed to settle. He added: "I have fought
the good fight, I have finished the race and I have remained faithful.
10.5 years of IsoHunt has been a long journey by any business definition
and forever in internet start-up time.
"It started as a programming hobby in my university days that has become so, so much more."
Court documents acknowledged that it is unlikely that Mr
Fung's company could pay $110m, and that the MPAA would probably receive
between $2m and $4m.
Degree of separation
Like a similar site, The Pirate Bay, that has been blocked in
the UK by a court order, IsoHunt did not host pirated material itself.
It instead acted as a directory of sources from which to download illegal files.
Continue reading the main story
“Start Quote
The successful outcome of this
landmark lawsuit will also will help preserve jobs and protect the tens
of thousands of businesses in the creative industries”
Chris Dodd
Motion Picture Association of America
According to court documents, Mr
Fung's defence hinged on this degree of separation - and argued that it
was the users of IsoHunt responsible for distributing pirated material,
not IsoHunt.
The Californian court disagreed.
"It 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," said MPAA chairman Mr Dodd.
"The successful outcome of this landmark lawsuit will also
will help preserve jobs and protect the tens of thousands of businesses
in the creative industries, whose hard work and investments are
exploited by sites like IsoHunt."
'Reluctant revolutionary'
Ahead of the ruling, Mr Fung had
taken to social news site Reddit to take part in an AMAA - Ask Me Almost Anything - session.
In it, he described himself as a "reluctant revolutionary", and backed calls for copyright reform.
He said he did not hold a disregard for the law, and acted
upon requests to remove links to pirated content when the company was
made aware.
He also said the industry could render sites like IsoHunt
obsolete if it offered simultaneous releases worldwide, as well as
digital offerings that were cheaper than physical copies.
His thoughts echoed findings by a trio of researchers at George Mason University in Virginia, US.
Their site
piracydata.org has been collating the weekly top 10 most-pirated films and investigating whether legal digital methods were available.
They found that half of the movies in the list were not
available to access legally online. Furthermore, none of the 10 titles
could be streamed - arguably the most straightforward way to consume
media online.
However, in contrast, efforts by Fox to curb piracy of TV series The Walking Dead fell flat.
Despite the first episode of the latest series being made
available to stream free online, the programme was still illegally
downloaded more than 500,000 times, according to data gathered by
Torrentfreak.com.
