B.C. man targeted in Hollywood lawsuit

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Five years ago, Gary Fung set up a small website in his B.C. home to let visitors search for files available through a then-emerging peer-to-peer file-sharing system called BitTorrent.

What started as a hobby project to help Fung improve his programming skills has grown into one of the largest file-sharing websites on the Internet - with five paid staff members and growing advertising revenues - and has made Fung the target of a major lawsuit launched by the Hollywood film industry.

"At first, it was a side-project to learn some of the language and databases - mostly for technical reasons," says the 25-year-old Richmond man, who started isohunt.com while studying computer engineering at the University of British Columbia.

"I hosted it off my cable modem at home, so it hardly had any traffic."

But in the years since, Fung has put his studies on hold as he maintains a website that sees 18 million visitors a month, linking them to more than 25 million files ranging from music and movies to video games and software.

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