Torrent aggregator site, IsoHunt, last week reached a settlement with the Motion Picture Association of America which would require it to close down forever. The deal was that it would shut-down within seven days of the settlement, but site administrator Gary Fung has decided to take the page down early to dodge those wanting to make a copy of the site.
According to TorrentFreak, IsoHunt closed down prematurely and permanently in the wee hours of this morning (local time) to prevent a crew of people from ArchiveTeam making a copy of the site and its torrents.
The site’s final post was from Fung. It read:
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 thinks 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 it. 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
Sadly, the ‘what he’s working on next’ is just a Rickroll.
The ArchiveTeam reportedly managed to get almost 250GB of data before the shutdown, but comments and forum posts are now officially dead.
Vale, IsoHunt. [TorrentFreak]