The Rise of the IsoHunt Clones
02 January 2014
Weeks after the October 2013 shuttering of popular torrent-sharing site IsoHunt, a clone of the site has reappeared on browsers around the world at isohunt.to and isohunt.ee. IsoHunt agreed to shut down and pay a US$110 million settlement with the Motion Picture Association of America.
Visitors to isohunt.com are now greeted with a message noting that a United States federal court has shut down the site. “If you are looking for your favorite movies or TV shows online, there are more ways than ever today to get high quality access to them on legal platforms,” the message says.
The new site is unrelated to the previous site, administrators of the previous site say.
The TorrentFreak website reported that the “new IsoHunt” draws heavily on the original site so that users will “feel like being at home” when using the site. “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 innovation or competition, and isoHunt’s fate is one of the examples of how they deal with it,” isohunt.to’s creators told TorrentFreak.
“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.”