A Federal judge has brought down the curtain on BitTorrent search engine IsoHunt. The judge ruled that the service intentionally encouraged piracy and therefore had to go.

    In the latest of a series of rulings against peer-to-peer companies, a federal judge has decided that BitTorrent search engine IsoHunt infringed copyright by intentionally encouraging piracy.

    "Evidence of defendants' intent to induce infringement is overwhelming and beyond reasonable dispute," wrote U.S. District Court Judge Stephen Wilson in the central district of California.

    The ruling is at least the fourth major defeat for a peer-to-peer company since the courts shut down the original Napster in 2001. Four years later, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that peer-to-peer company Grokster infringed copyright by inducing infringement. In addition, last year, a federal judge ordered peer-to-peer company TorrentSpy to pay $110 million damages to the Motion Picture Association of America after finding that the site destroyed evidence relevant to the MPAA's copyright infringement lawsuit.

source:  maxconsole