TorrentSpy Slapped with $110 Million Judgement
 

About Fucking Time


TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay a $110 million fine by a federal judge in Los Angeles. The BitTorrent site was found guilty on the charges of copyright infringement of several movie studios represented by the MPAA.

torrentspyThis default judgment is the result of an ongoing court case between the MPAA and Valence Media, TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnel?s company, that started early 2006.

It is uncertain at this point whether TorrentSpy will appeal.

Unsurprisingly, MPAA?s Dan Glickman was very pleased with the outcome of the case that lasted over two years, as he said:

?This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of sites. The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.?

?The claims made by the MPAA in this case don?t stand up to any sort of scrutiny,? says Andrew Norton, head of the US Pirate Party in a response. ?It is also clear that our judicial system urgently needs some unbiased education in modern technical matters, as anyone that has watched this case knows the judge is out of her depth. What chance does justice have in that situation??

In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision - and to ensure the privacy of their users - TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic and revenue.

This was not enough for the MPAA, who argued that TorrentSpy had ignored the court decision. The legal battle continued, and this lead to a preventative closure of the site by Justin, to protect the privacy of its users.

http://torrentfreak.com/torrentspy-s...illion-080507/

Nuts....

Good news for sure.

sweet justice..

I've been saying all along... it's just a matter of time before most of these sites are shut down! You can't steal and/or link to other people's work and profit from it, then call it ok... good news all the way around :thumbsup

So this is what adapting will bring you.. I hope more people around here start adapting.

adapting to jail cells.
:thumbsup

Big deal.Millions of other torrent sites still here.

They are next. :2 cents:

dats hardcore

precedence

precedence

precedence

hehe, this article is funny - but not as funny as the comments here..

This isn't a victory for mpaa, it's what happens when you ignore the courts and do as you wish. It's not like mpaa will ever collect or these guys will ever be in jail.

The only thing that this did was tell every American (and millions of others) online what torrent is. It's not like they stopped a single person for using torrent, they just moved and went to another source, that can't be shut down or stopped.

Precedence has already been set on cases like this, it's just a 'word' like they to use to make people think they actually have enough power to stop this.

Another great example of people spending millions to achieve nothing.

when the piratebay comes down, then you can rejoice...

Or you can just be offshore where US copyright laws don't apply..

QFT :2 cents:

Why isn't the government just pushing to force US based internet hosts to block sites that have been proven in court to be obscenely unlawful (from any country) from being accessed? The US population has already proven they can and will do nothing about anything the government does, and it would be an economic boom you'd think. If the average person just can't get torrents anymore, where would they get it?

google search "iron man filetype:torrent"

Same thing. So I'm not sure how they will ever get rid of torrents or whatever comes after torrents. They seem to be going at it completely wrong.

Yep adapt and get the fuck sued out of ya:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh

Funny thread.

Kill torrents, kill piracy forever. :1orglaugh

They will simply go underground! :)

:thumbsup

How does an illegal site keep a domain?

That's the easiest way to bring down illegal sites enmasse.

I know it brings in freedom of speech issues, but freedom of speech is not freedom to break the law.

Sites like TorrentSpy can't they need to advertise to earn the money. I think www.pak-inc.com are looking at ways to profit from suing the uploaders. Adopt the Acacia business model, cheaper to settle than fight.

Bump....

Most of torrent sites are hosted in CAnada/netherlands/germany where us court cant do anything.

Yep, there's no way they can stop these guys. They can always go off-shore if they want.

Piratebay is next. Warner Brothers, Patalex, MGM, Twentieth Century Fox, Columbia och Mars Media sued them for a total of 120 million SEK (about $20 million). It will be up in court this fall.

Because Netherlands and Germany are the big offshore countries.. :1orglaugh

Maybe,but they will need to open special division in sweden just for that.

Good news, fuck torrents.. :thumbsup

Time to bump good news.

There is no precedence in the US yet. That will come when ISOhunt goes to trial. He is not folding like the others did.

I never said that. I meant they can move somewhere else where they're untouchable. In Netherlands some torrent site owners already got arrested afaik.

good news

The MPAA isnt getting 110 million...where the hell do they expect it to come from. What an absurd number

Exactly.


Exactly.

Everyone who thinks if the MPAA won a court case against torrentspy for hosting a search engine would be a good thing. You're far off your rocker. If it became possible, in the court of law, to make it illegal to simply provide a service showing you were and how to find something. The entirety of the internet would go under scrutiny. Just think about the people in power right now, and the bat shit insane agendas or legislation against the adult industry. Can you even wrap your head around the problems we'd face, and every other form of internet media?

Trying to take down a search engine. It blows my mind when I see backwards ass politics attacking a problem completely wrong. It's crazier to witness the people who thrive and conduct business online. Trying to say making a search engine illegal would benefit the online world. It would be a disaster, plain and simple.

Now I'm not trying to defend torrents, or torrentspy. I'm simply saying anyone who's rooting for the mpaa is a fucking moron. :upsidedow

Think about what it cost to lose this case. A good warning to anyone else who thinks running a Torrent search engine is a key to make millions. You could find yourself bankrupted in court.

As for the nay sayers, got a better solution then please tell us all.

i am interested in how this goes down on appeal
the court ruled against torrentspy becuase they mpaa argued they were destroying evidence and therefore had to be guilty.

The problem is destroying evidence was the act of blocking access from the states.

The purpose of which was to not have the information they were required to give up.

the arguement can be made by blocking access they not only not have the infromation but they reduced the number of potential infringers to zero. Since the purpose of the court order was to obtain information about infringement and not to deliberately violate the privacy rights of non infringing/ non jurisdictional use, that act was a legitimate method of complying with the order (just like microsoft giving a broken version of windows 98, to comply with the doj court order-- as was established on appeal)

Fines will not stop it. It won't be stopped until there are international laws/agreements where domain supplier is obligated to shut down domain and/or ISPs are obligated to shut down the servers. Besides the problems with processing and practising such international rules, new technology will arise, and here we go again.

The real problem is not really the suppliers of such websites or programs, but the fact that ordinary people are stealing, and they do not really worry or care...until they get caught.

Good news indeed.

You'd think we would have learned something from Napster. There is no way to stop piracy on the internet. When one avenue is closed a new one emerges. There are too many people here and they are only getting smarter.

And there is the key.

As for appeal, these guys are bankrupt. Who will pay for an appeal?

so you agree the MPAA isnt getting shit