Torrent site isoHunt has formally shut down after more than ten years of activity, following a seven-year court case with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA).

Websites hosting torrents for countless movies, games, books and other content have long been withstanding anti-piracy efforts and isoHunt is just the latest one to raise its white flag, joining other fallen comrades such as the late BtJunkie.

According to a BBC News report, IsoHunt owner Gary Fung would have to pay $110 million to the MPAA, but the payout will likely drop to between $2 and $4 million due to limited resources (it's hard to imagine Fung would have $110 million to pay off).

"This is it. We are shutting down isoHunt services early," reads a message on the isoHunt website, entitled "Initiating Self Destruct" and written by none other than Gary Fung. "I'm told there was this Internet archrival team that wants to make historical copy of our .torrent files, I'm honoured that people think 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 ever 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," Fung further notes.

Earlier this year, UK ISPs blocked torrent site The Pirate Bay (TPB) following a court order. Piracy numbers have not seen any significant drops after the block, as the Internet always has its ways. The MPAA, however, sees the new isoHunt shutdown as a victory and a major step forward in the right direction.

The case against isoHunt was brought to court by a group of companies including Paramount, Disney, and Twentieth Century Fox, which accused the torrent site of willfully infringing copyright by facilitating free download for millions of movies and TV shows.

Just like The Pirate Bay and other such torrent websites, isoHunt did not actually host files for download, but listed links to sites that did, acting as a directory of sources that offered those files. As with all such cases, Fung went for the typical defense, arguing that isoHunt users, and not isoHunt itself, were responsible for downloading and distributing pirated content. The Californian court, however, had a different opinion.