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.
A new anti-piracy law, proposed yesterday by New York State Attorney General Andrew Cuomo has been criticized as pointless pandering to lobby groups, and ‘cronyism’. Worse, the bill is based on date from the widely discredited LEK study of 2006.
The legality of BitTorrent sites has always been highly debated. As of today, no court has ever ruled that a website offering .torrent links is legal or not. This might change soon, as isoHunt and the MPAA once again clash in court.
In 2005, DVDr-core was the first BitTorrent site that was targeted by the MPAA outside the US. A classic story: Man runs site, man gets sued over site, nothing more is ever heard. Whilst in most cases, this means that the defendant bowed to pressure, paid an out of court settlement, and promised not to do it again, that is not the case here.
At the end of March we reported that the MPAA’s pirate-chasing lawyer Espen Tøndel sent a letter demanding that Norwegian ISPs disconnect file-sharers from the Internet. Unfortunately for him, the ISPs aren’t going to comply and have issued a letter in response, refusing to break the law to please copyright holders.
After being blown off by the Norwegian police, MPAA lawyer Espen Tøndel is now demanding that ISPs disconnect Norwegian file-sharers from the Internet. According to IKT Norway, an interest group for ISPs, the lawyer has sent a letter to Norwegian ISPs on behalf of The Norwegian branch of the MPAA.
Lucky & Flo, the dogs employed by the MPAA to hunt down pirate media have returned home. But before media pirates start celebrating, beware: there are two new pirate-chasing canines on the block. The authorities say “Good Boy!” to their latest recruits - Paddy and Manny, all the way from Ireland.
A Los Angeles court decided against TorrentSpy in their ongoing legal battle with the MPAA and terminated their case. According to the ruling, TorrentSpy was sanctioned for destructing evidence.
A man from Quebec has become one of the first to be charged under Canada’s new anti-camcording legislation after being caught trying to record the movie ‘Dan in Real Life’. The man - who intended to upload the movie to the internet - faces up to 2 years in jail.
Sometime during the last 24 hours there was a mass deletion of aXXo torrents from The Pirate Bay’s tracker. It appears that a dispute between aXXo and The Pirate Bay about how to best handle alleged MPAA torrent meddling got way out of hand - with aXXo deleting lots of his torrents and leaving The Pirate Bay.
Last Month The Pirate Bay filed complaints against some of the key players in the entertainment industry for corrupting and sabotaging their BitTorrent tracker. The MPAA has now responded to these claims and deny that they worked with MediaDefender. Unfortunately for the MPAA, we have proof that they did.
