TorrentSpy Loses Case Against MPAA
Written by Ernesto on December 18, 2007A 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.
The court ruled that TorrentSpy tampered with evidence as they deleted infringing forum threads, deleted and renamed categories and subcategories that referred to copyrighted material. On top of this, TorrentSpy allegedly deleted IP addresses of its users, something that was apparently considered to be evidence. The court explained that “although termination of a case is a harsh sanction appropriate only in extraordinary circumstance, the circumstances of this case are sufficiently extraordinary to merit such a sanction.”
The MPAA already claims a victory, but Justin Bunnell, founder of TorrentSpy does not want to give up yet. He told News.com in a response: “It’s not like they proved their case. It’s not like they proved that TorrentSpy infringed copyright, I think we have a lot of grounds for appeal and we’ll pursue it vigorously.”
John Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA said in a response to the ruling: “The court clearly recognized that defendants engaged in evidence destruction because they knew that such evidence would prove damaging to them. The sole purpose of TorrentSpy and sites like it is to facilitate and promote the unlawful dissemination of copyrighted content. TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement and we will continue to aggressively enforce our members’ rights
to stop such infringement.”
To get a more “balanced” view we asked Andrew Norton, a spokesman for the US Pirate Party for a response, and he said: “This case shows again the need for radical reform in the US legal system, as well as educating our judges to deal with modern technology. This is not the 1970s, where the basic underpinnings and mechanics of technologies were readily understandable by the layman, but require significant knowledge in the technologies involved. Perhaps it is time we had specific courts with jurists who are kept upto date on technological progress, so that justice can be sought, rather than judgments based on which side has the most lyrical attorney.”
In August, a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data stored in RAM. In a response to this decision - and to ensure the privacy of their users - they decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. TorrentSpy, once the most visited BitTorrent site on the Internet has taken some serious hits from the MPAA and this ruling doesn’t make it easier. In October we reported that TorrentSpy’s traffic, and thus their revenue have plunged after they banned US visitors, and it is not likely that the movie studios will back off the site shuts down completely.
To be continued…
Previously: BitTorrent Launches Ad Supported Streaming
Next: New MPAA Pirate-Sniffing Canines, All the Way from Ireland
101 Responses (Add yours or TrackBack)
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Hmmm….
hrm..
“To get a more balanced view we asked Andrew Norton, a spokesman for the US pirate party for a response, and he said:”
You call that a more balanced source???
I want TorrentSpy back in the US!!
Thank God i dont live in that hellhole.
Chalk up another one for the red white & black, oops. Red white & blue. That was the colours for Nazi Germany.
Problem is this hellhole is spewing it’s laws onto other countries.
Reminds me of those old propaganda movies showing the swaztika spreading over europe.
[quote comment="242449"]“To get a more balanced view we asked Andrew Norton, a spokesman for the US pirate party for a response, and he said:”
You call that a more balanced source???[/quote]
of course the articles view is more balanced if the hear the people from both sides of the conflict, he never said that Andrew Norton view was non partial if thats what you misunderstood then simple clarification, if you mean that hearing both sides dossent make the article less biased then i would like too see your logical argument for that?
The blocking of US visitors really was a big hit, but what did you suspect. Of course they aren’t going to back down, you’ve already given in some, so they want more. If you give someone an inch of room to bully you around, they will do it and keep doing it, until you can’t stand up anymore.
i think i’ll just short my computer out and burn my house down and sit around on the floor of the local mall.
there’s no freedom or love left in this world.
it’s all about the greenbacks.
I used to used to use TorrentSpy when I was first introduced to torrents, and although I had moved on to “higher-level” sites since then, I was pretty pissed when they were forced to basically go under.
However, I’ve come to really admire them for taking the extra measures to protect their users, even if some of them don’t appreciate it at the moment.
I really think the guys at TorrentSpy were and are some genuinely great people, placing the privacy and safety of their users above their own.
John Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA
Can someone find out how much this guy gets paid?
Would love to know how much he is stealing from artists.
Is destructing even a word?
nope
.
torrentspy should give back access to us. users what do they have to lose now
What is this crap anyway. There is no evidence so they can say now you destroyed it so lock you up anyway?
Typical American attitudes. Can’t the rest of the world somehow block the U.S. from the internet ?
well well well…
why these assholes are after torrentspy.
i think only 3-4% bittorrent users using torrentspy, the slowest torrent search engine on the net.
slowest download speed, so why should anyone use them LoL
still MPAA wasting his time closing a useless search engine! down google or youtube :)
Youtube hosted over 100000 copyrighted materials. no one can touch their shit.
They own internet ;)
tampering with evidence is serious
we knew this was coming, no surprises here
this is all part of torrentspy’s game plan
Youtube and Google have both been sued before. Torrentspy was once the most visited torrent site. Shut up.
@15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence
Educate yourself, you sound like a fool.
Copyright protection clip:
http://www.goodiebag.tv/episodes/rod_brickman.htm
Any Americans wishing to use TorrentSpy should go to;
http://unblocktorrentspy.com/
[quote comment="242544"]@15
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spoliation_of_evidence
Educate yourself, you sound like a fool.[/quote]
And what’s that supposed to tell me.
I hearby charge YOU for Spoliation of evidence because YOU just made several million dollars in your recent drug lab.
Although, no evidence was found, this PROOVES that you destroyed the evidence and you should go to jail by default.
mpaa fags need to die.
@22
Well, assumming that I did operate a drug lab and no drugs were found, they could still charge me with the intent to manufacture them. The money trail (if there was one) would prove that I already had.
So yea, the law is the law… regardless of how stupid you want to make it, and yourself, sound.
Oh, btw… Americans invented the Internet.
[quote comment="242517"]
why these assholes are after torrentspy (?)
[/quote]
they are after torrentspy because it originates from the USA and they can reach it. the MPAA was seeking legal precedent to strengthen their global strategem against filesharing. other countries take note of US precedents (an identical case is still outstanding against isohunt)
torrentspy’s ’suicide act’ is noble and should be respected. they are risking criminal charges to avoid accelerating the MPAA’s campaign against the rest of us. if every tracker did what torrentspy has done then the MPAA very quickly would cease court action. the point is you only go to court to win, and this is no victory for the MPAA
the MPAA walks away from the case with a Pyrrhic victory. if they cannot make a dent in the isohunt armour their legal campaign will be a public relations catastrophe. the MPAA’s risk profile today is higher than it was yesterday and their credit rating has taken a nose-dive. they are worthless if they cannot serve their core function, the effective control of the marketplace
is gonna be interesting what happens with isohunt because DMCA law is in isohunt’s favor. isohunt has acted reasonably and the MPAA complaint against torrentspy has educated isohunt’s lawyers and the courts
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