Isohunt Ordered To Take Down Illegal Torrents

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Isohunt could be getting close to shuttering its doors after an order from the court.

With the Pirate Bay beaten down (but not sunk), a ruling by U.S. District Judge Stephen Wilson in Los Angeles now opens fire on sharing sites such as Isohunt, Torrentbox and Podtropolis.

Unless there is some change in decision, Isohunt will likely have to shutter its doors to the 30 million unique monthly visitors that it gets.

The judge is demanding that Isohunt stop "creating, maintaining or providing access to browsable website categories of dot-torrent or similar files using or based on infringement-related terms."

Gary Fung, the 27-year-old Canadian who runs Isohunt, said that such a rule basically bans keyword searches. "Filtering against keywords. It amounts to nothing less than taking down our search engine," Fung said in a telephone interview with Wired.

Fung says that the Digital Millennium Copyright Act requires Hollywood to provide links to files to be removed. Banning keyword searches, however, could erroneously remove content that doesn't infringe on copyright.

"We’re discussing the mechanics, the process that is reasonable for an injunction," Fung said. "We’re still trying to hope that the judge will do the right thing."