# isoHunt.com breathes its last



## BORTZ (Oct 18, 2013)

isoHunt, a popular hangout for those wanting pirated material, is shutting down thanks to the owner Gary Fung has agreed to a settlement. Now bear in mind this isn't due to the government leaning on him, but of his own volition.

Today Gary Fung opened a new website which is simple WordPress site with only one posting:


> _“It’s sad to see my baby go. But 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 startup time. It started as a programming hobby in my university days that has become so, so much more. _
> 
> _It’s been a learning experience beyond what I imagined. I’ve done the best I could push the social benefits of BitTorrent and file sharing, the searching and sharing of culture itself, but it’s time for me to move on to new software ideas and projects._
> 
> ...


 
He has to pay a $110 million to hollywood film companies for "damages". isoHunt will join napster, Kazaa, and Limewire in the graveyard of piracy sites.

 Source


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## Sicklyboy (Oct 18, 2013)

Private tracker master race
Usenet master race

Master race aside, always a shame to see a site like this go down.  I admit I had used it quite a few times before I jumped on the Usenet bandwagon, though I had also used TPB and a few private trackers I can't remember the names of.  This is pretty high up there as far as the public ones go.


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## JohnnyBlaze1986 (Oct 18, 2013)

Who gives a shit? isoHunt sucked anyway. The Pirate Bay is so much better nowadays. isoHunt has been blocking results for years now. I'm kinda glad to see it go. It overstayed its welcome.


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## bowser (Oct 18, 2013)

isohunt dead? i so hurt.


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## raulpica (Oct 18, 2013)

I remember when isoHunt was good... in 2004.


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## Joe88 (Oct 18, 2013)

JohnnyBlaze1986 said:


> isoHunt has been blocking results for years now.


 
you can just use http://anonymouse.org/anonwww.html to bypass it


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## Celice (Oct 18, 2013)

Many, I remember when isohunt used to be a useful torrent place, compared to all the other trashy aggregates out there. Probably overlived itself anyways, though.


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## ShadowSoldier (Oct 18, 2013)

I liked isoHunt. I haven't used it in years because for some reason it stopped working from my IP. The site wouldn't load for jack shit for me, and even then, a lot of torrents weren't on there. I found that the site turned messy. But still, it's a shame to see a vet torrent site go down.


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## Satangel (Oct 18, 2013)

Used it a few times, but can't remember the last time I visited it now. Sad to see it go, but a new one will arise......


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## Gahars (Oct 18, 2013)

And so the isoHunter becomes the hunted.


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## GamerzHell9137 (Oct 18, 2013)

Never liked it.
It was the place where all of my things that i want to illegally get were fake


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## mrnintendo15 (Oct 18, 2013)

I used to use ISOHunt like seven years ago... It's seen better days.  This isn't really a big loss.  I just wish Demonoid was back already


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## The Milkman (Oct 19, 2013)

GamerzHell9137 said:


> Never liked it.
> It was the place where all of my things that i want to illegally get were fake


 

I hope we're not talking about pizza...


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## BlackWizzard17 (Oct 19, 2013)

NNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
that's all I have to say.


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## JoostinOnline (Oct 19, 2013)

Well, guess that means piracy is defeated forever.


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## Bladexdsl (Oct 19, 2013)

usenet is still here and it always will be they can NEVER shut that down


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## gifi4 (Oct 19, 2013)

Using a combination of The Pirate Bay and (God, it feels so weird being able to actually type that and not get a warn/ban) a private tracker that I got a free invite to, I've been good for all pirated content ever needed. Not that big of a loss.


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## jhazicalization (Oct 19, 2013)

mrnintendo15 said:


> I used to use ISOHunt like seven years ago... It's seen better days. This isn't really a big loss. I just wish Demonoid was back already


 
well demonoid is already back a few months ago...goodbye isohunt


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## the_randomizer (Oct 19, 2013)

Isohunt's still around?


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## Deleted User (Oct 19, 2013)

Never used it anyway, movies/tv I go with --removed--, games I go to pirate bay. No tears were shed over this.


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## gifi4 (Oct 19, 2013)

king_leo said:


> Never used it anyway, movies/tv I go with --removed--, games I go to pirate bay. No tears were shed over this.


How can you go with --removed--?
It provides the shittest quality out there.
High quality video in a small file size? What's missing? I'll tell ya, decent audio! The audio is just horrible, camcorder audio is better...


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## Deleted User (Oct 19, 2013)

gifi4 said:


> How can you go with --removed--?
> It provides the shittest quality out there.
> High quality video in a small file size? What's missing? I'll tell ya, decent audio! The audio is just horrible, camcorder audio is better...


 
I've yet to have a problem with it, I plug my tablet into tv via hdmi and it looks and sounds fine, I've only had problems with 2 movies (which was my fault for choosing bad rips).


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## FAST6191 (Oct 19, 2013)

Bladexdsl said:


> usenet is still here and it always will be they can NEVER shut that down



Maybe, however giganews at least (probably still the premier service) is taking a pounding of late (TV shows, films, games and not just the long standing HBO stuff), many of the indexers are not doing much better either. I do not know what goes with astraweb though.


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## DinohScene (Oct 19, 2013)

And there goes another tracker which has potentially rare software.
Lost forever....


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## raulpica (Oct 19, 2013)

DinohScene said:


> And there goes another tracker which has potentially rare software.
> Lost forever....


Potentially rare software... which had 0 seeders.

Been there, done that.


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## Cyan (Oct 19, 2013)

I never used that website, didn't even know it. I don't crawl internet to find every existing releases. I don't miss gaming torrent websites (I would miss torrents only for anime).




FAST6191 said:


> Maybe, however giganews at least (probably still the premier service) is taking a pounding of late (TV shows, films, games and not just the long standing HBO stuff), many of the indexers are not doing much better either. I do not know what goes with astraweb though.


All three main servers (Astraweb, giganews and usenetserver) comply with DMCA and remove files when they are uploaded (usually based on filters) and before they get the chance to propagate to other servers.

Newsgroup can't be shutdown but it became harder to find something.
For two years, search engines and indexing websites are harder to use now. They filter your own search string, remove many files before indexing, not even mentioning fake uploads which are more common now. (why do people bother making bad uploads? what do they earn?). You need to retrieve headers with a news reader.
Uploaders now rename the known filtered filenames (mostly for TV shows) and upload them on unusual/different groups, files still end deleted too but more later and they can be found if you follow the group daily and know where to look. There are always hints.


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## Bladexdsl (Oct 19, 2013)

FAST6191 said:


> I do not know what goes with astraweb though.


 
that's what i use and it's all fine. as for search engines etc being harder to use that's nonsense gotta know where to look. try OZ(name of the usenet file) 

it's the one i use it's free and it's as good as the old UseNeXT


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## FAST6191 (Oct 19, 2013)

Oh yeah I cottoned onto the obfuscated names thing early on (though for a time it was more of a curiosity for me), spread out onto other groups and spread out onto other indexers and I am not sure about at the at upload stuff (you often have a solid 15 hours even on the popular groups).

On fake uploads. There was the passworded phase but thankfully that died down.

Grabbing headers... I should still have readers that can do it installed. I guess indexers were to usenet what non private torrents are to that world.

I wonder if we have just discovered the next boom in piracy methods ("file lockers/free hosting" -> napster -> old school p2p (Gnutella2/ -> torrent style p2p -> "file lockers" -> hardened/dark cloud usenet). It would fit in my distributed but dedicated, parity using, non uniform access method, partially homogenised (could pull from various sources) piracy and a bit more method that I keep kicking around in my head too, though I suppose in a sense that was kind of what edonkey was, what a lot of IRC dealt in. If I could be bothered to deal with web stuff I would not mind a spell as MPAA/RIAA villain of the week.


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## Cyan (Oct 19, 2013)

I'm pretty sure the problem I described is common to all servers and search engine as even the posters changed their method of upload. (I'm talking about TVshows)
You can't search using filenames and they don't use filenames anymore (only release number, and without a database it's harder to find what you are looking for without trying each of them randomly).
Maybe your search engine also search inside nfo and srr? that would fix the problem.

But for games, it's still using filenames and websites with release nfo are still great.


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## The Catboy (Oct 19, 2013)

I honestly thought that site was dead years ago


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## Foxi4 (Oct 19, 2013)

What a shame, isoHunt was where I was getting all my retro games in torrent form. Oh well, there are alternatives.


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## Thomas83Lin (Oct 19, 2013)

Shame, I wonder how long PBay will last. that's what I'm using now


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## Nah3DS (Oct 19, 2013)

I miss Underground Gamer


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## MegaBassBX (Oct 19, 2013)

RIP to one of the titans, although it was a shitty web site


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## drfsupercenter (Oct 20, 2013)

Oh wow, I saw the post in which the admin was done with IsoHunt, but I had just assumed he was stopping work on it and leaving the site running.

I hardly use torrents anymore but I always used IsoHunt when I did.  So... any good alternatives out there? ThePirateBay has too much fake crap.


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## TwilightWarrior (Oct 20, 2013)

I did use iso hunt sometime but only whenever The PB was temporally down



drfsupercenter said:


> Oh wow, I saw the post in which the admin was done with IsoHunt, but I had just assumed he was stopping work on it and leaving the site running.
> 
> I hardly use torrents anymore but I always used IsoHunt when I did. So... any good alternatives out there? ThePirateBay has too much* fake crap*.


 
Barely. Just look at the seeder and comments. But mainly, check if the uploader has a skull beside there name.


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## drfsupercenter (Oct 20, 2013)

Well, I just remember there were loads of uploads looking like Hollywood movies but that were just stupid viruses and crap.  And you'd get like 15 copies of the same file which just flood the list when searching.

Or maybe I'm mixing up IsoHunt and TPB.  Not really even sure since like I said I hardly use torrents these days.


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## Bladexdsl (Oct 20, 2013)

Cyan said:


> I'm pretty sure the problem I described is common to all servers and search engine as even the posters changed their method of upload. (I'm talking about TVshows)
> You can't search using filenames and they don't use filenames anymore .


the one i use doesn't do that they have full names and can even download stuff from a year ago.


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## Ethevion (Oct 20, 2013)

If I still used torrents, I might've cared. Warez sites ftw!


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## Cyan (Oct 20, 2013)

Bladexdsl said:


> the one i use doesn't do that they have full names and can even download stuff from a year ago.


Then you are not looking for the same files than me.
You can find the filenames in a search engine/indexing website, but they are fake files, rar in rar, etc. (and not on any server anymore. I tried usenetserver and giganews, I don't know about astraweb but comments shows that even astraweb delete files).


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## Joe88 (Oct 21, 2013)

well thats it



> *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_


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