IsoHunt Brought Back From The Dead, New Spin-Off Created

Earlier this month torrent indexing site IsoHunt was forced to shut down after its owned Gary Fung faced a lawsuit from the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) which ended up with him having to pay them $110 million in compensation. Of course Gary Fung is unable to pay that kind of sum and wouldn’t do so even if he did have the money, hence why IsoHunt had to shut down instead. Now a few weeks later TorrentFreak reports that IsoHunt has been resurrected by a different group of people under a new domain of isohunt.to not isohunt.com. The new “spin-off” is apparently in no way associated with the old IsoHunt but it has been designed to pretty much imitate it.

“ArchiveTeam” were believed to be behind a move to revive IsoHunt and they went to extensive efforts to try and back up the site before it was taken offline. On hearing of ArchiveTeam’s attempts to backup and essentially “copy” IsoHunt, owner Gary Fung took the site offline early to prevent it. This means that the new IsoHunt is actually in no way associated with ArchiveTeam or the old IsoHunt operators. The new IsoHunt is operated by a third party team who say that preserving the cultural icon of Isohunt is what matters to them.

“IsoHunt has been a great part of the torrent world for more than a decade. It’s a big loss to everyone who used it over the years. Media corporations don’t like innovative or competition and isoHunt’s fate is one of the examples of how they deal with it…IsoHunt can definitely be called a file-sharing icon. People got used to it and they don’t want to simply let it go. We want those people to feel like being at home while visiting isohunt.to. The main goal is to restore the website with torrents and provide users with the same familiar interface.”

Whether you believe their justification about preserving a cultural icon to be true, or whether you just think they are looking to make a quick buck off someone else’s hard work, they are still seeking to create an IsoHunt imitiation or replacement service. The new operators of isohunt.to say that 75% of the old isohunt.com database has been restored, whether former isohunt.com users warm to the new domain and website layout is another matter.

Image courtesy of Isohunt.to