Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

IsoHunt Settles With MPAA, Will Shut Down And Pay Up to $110 Million

Posted by Unknown on from the later-found-with-knees-broken dept.

hypnosec writes "The MPAA and Gary Fung, owner of IsoHunt.com, have settled their case out of court, with the torrent indexing site closing as part of the deal. The judge presiding over the MPAA vs. IsoHunt.com case, Jacqueline Chooljian, canceled the hearing which was planned after she was informed that both the parties have settled outside court. 'The website isoHunt.com today agreed to halt all operations worldwide in connection with a settlement of the major movie studios' landmark copyright lawsuit against the site and its operator Gary Fung' reads the press release." Only a few days after the MPAA was accosted by the judge for seeking damages several times the total worth of isoHunt: "But if you strip him of all his assets — and you’re suggesting that a much lesser number of copyright infringements would accomplish that, where is the deterrence by telling the world that you took someone’s resources away because of illegal conduct entirely or 50 times over?" Still, the settlement seems unfair: The MPAA has asked the court for $110 million, when the MPAA itself admitted that isoHunt only has $5 or $6 million. So much for the optimism for isoHunt's successor.

6 of 245 comments (clear)

  1. The more you tighten your grip by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The more will slip through your fingers.

  2. Fortunately we still have Google. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    The best torrent search engine ever will never bow to this kind of bullying crap. Long live Google!

    1. Re:Fortunately we still have Google. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The takedowns mostly consist of links to forums that link to filelocker sites which have also been DMCAed, so they are of limited use in finding infringing files. Sure, a determined pirate can use them to follow a trail, but it's a lot of work.

      Oh, pirates. Request for you. Those NFO files? Include hashes. File size, ed2k, aich, btih, sha1 and tth. That covers all the major hash-search-capable p2p networks. That way even if all the filelocker links are down, people can still try to use the hashes to aid in their quest.

    2. Re:Fortunately we still have Google. by JWW · · Score: 5, Interesting

      That's the reason for the $110 million settlement.

      That number is orders of magnitude greater than what ISOHunt can pay.

      The reason the settlement number is so large is that the MPAA is looking for how much they want to charge google for enabling people to search the internet.

  3. Dysfunctional legal system. by NettiWelho · · Score: 5, Insightful

    MPAA demanding money for imaginary damage done to imaginery property? Pay them with monopoly money.

  4. Re:Proportionality by jedidiah · · Score: 5, Informative

    > It hands it out on the basis of how much harm was done. ...and there was none done here.

    On the other hand, there have been a lot of limits placed on civil judgments lately. A lot of hapless tort reform astroturfers have caused a large number of tort reforms to be enacted in various places.

    Chances are that if YOU personally are injured that you will never see anything close to an equitable judgement.

    These absurd COPYRIGHT verdicts are due to statutory damages laws that have no relation whatsoever to any actual real damages. They are in fact a blatant short cut around proving actual damages. They have little in common with some prole being crippled. A crippled prole has to show real damages.

    Crime and punishment for the poor, tort reform for the rich.

    --
    A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.