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
103 Responses
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another victory against file sharing on the control agenda
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm
educate yourself as to why this is happening. We all know, but for a few exceptions, no one is really losing money here. Software YES, movies / tv no not really, maybe a little reduced dvd revenue but they are overpriced as it is.
The fact is, most people that download stuff do indeed buy stuff aswell, alot of the time only because they downloaded it first.
And the other side of that coin is, not everyone that downloaded any given movie would have actually paid for it if piracy was not an option.
The lost revenue is phantom money, imagined losses of money they actually wouldn’t have gotten regardless of piracy.
Why do so many governments want to bend over and fight for these pricks? Follow my link and wake the hell up.
It’s NOT about piracy, it’s about destroying any bit of freedom on the ‘net’, it’s about destroying the net as we know it, and rebuilding it in a draconian big brother style way.
Fighting piracy is a means to an end. And just like I predicted, they’ve started targetting the internet and people like us as terrorists.
Get over the filesharing aspect and see the big picture before it’s too late.
So let me get the straight…the Bush administration destroys evidence that is clearly defined by law not to be destroyed and nothing happens…Torrentspy deletes people’s IP addresses and its a closed case? Hmmmm…
do like the bastards here do when a business decides it wants to keep the money owed to employees and customers the just shut down and change their name then back to business as usual.
so torrent spy needs to temp shut down and rename to spiTorrents…
[quote comment="242597"]Who cares who invented the internet.
That doesn’t give America the right to enforce their laws onto others.
I would like to see ISP’s in other counties just block all American traffic period.
I don’t think i’d miss out on anything, appart from corporate drivel.[/quote]
Salute to that…
> Oh, btw… Americans invented the Internet.
O RLY?
[quote comment="242576"]
Oh, btw… Americans invented the Internet.[/quote]
Tim Berners-Lee is English, you dopey cunt…
[quote comment="242851"]
The sooner these torrent thieves get put under the better…. it would open up business models for cheaper grass roots distribution of music and software….. niche sites could spring up and offer legal music downloads for a few dimes through paypal or something better.
quote]
Guess what, fucko? That’s already going on. Wake up & smell the coffee!
And just FYI, CD & DVD sales are going through the ROOF! The percentage rise is up year-on-year!
You think you can justify your corporate-cock-sucking drivel with ‘right-on’ soundbites? We’re way too clued-up these days & we see through that smokescreen.
Artists themselves don’t give a flying fuck about piracy; in fact, several of the more savvy ones are actually UTILISING the technology to BOOST their sales (Think: Radiohead).
The ONLY ‘people’ (term used very loosely) worried about BitTirrent technology are the outmoded dinosaurs of the RIAA/MPAA et al., who see their (unearned & unjustified) fat slice of the pie dwindling away - & you know what?
That’s a GOOD THING ™…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Berners-Lee
“Sir Timothy John Berners-Lee OM KBE FRS FREng FRSA (born June 8, 1955) is an English developer who invented the World Wide Web in March 1989.”
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“He is also the director of the World Wide Web Consortium (which oversees its continued development), and a senior researcher and holder of the 3Com Founders Chair at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (CSAIL).”
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“While an independent contractor at CERN from June to December 1980, Berners-Lee proposed a project based on the concept of hypertext, to facilitate sharing and updating information among researchers.[2] While there, he built a prototype system named ENQUIRE. After leaving CERN, in 1980, he went to work at John Poole’s Image Computer Systems Ltd., but he returned to CERN in 1984 as a fellow. In 1989, CERN was the largest Internet node in Europe, and Berners-Lee saw an opportunity to join hypertext with the Internet: “I just had to take the hypertext idea and connect it to the TCP and DNS ideas and — ta-da! — the World Wide Web.”"
I think everyone needs to band together and stop buying music. Bring the music industry to its knees! If they can’t afford their lawyers the problem is solved.
the biggest hackers are MPAA and the other one…
no offense, but this is TorrentSpy’s own fault. They should have known better. The MPAA is only taken advantage of this because TS is apparently VERY stupid legally.
good to see that they saved the users in all of this.
good thing i got a homemade electromagnet ready to go off if they come after me, lol
fuck you MPAA
you may think you “won”, but all you did was postponbe your failure.
The internet is NOT the http://WWW. And Tim invented the http protocol.
Nobody is really using Torrentspy since it got hit. But if you must use TS, just use a proxy.
It is time to expand the boycott even further. The RIAA are feeling the “devastating” effects of consumer wrath and are bleeding money because of their shortsighted actions. I say it’s Hollywood’s turn to feel the sting of a disgruntled public. Deprive them of the buck$ the MPAA needs to survive and they will die.
Boycott the bastards and don’t buy until the persecution STOPS!
Boycott the bastards and don’t buy until the persecution STOPS!
Boycott the bastards and don’t buy until the persecution STOPS!
Boycott the bastards and don’t buy until the persecution STOPS!
I agree!
Can’t this message be posted on ever P2P site?
The problem is that the U.S. is no longer a world leader. We have been ruined by money hungry foreigners and old white men. We no longer have an honest law system or an honest government. The new rule in the U.S. is ” he who has the most money laughs last.” Our law and government is totally run by money. Until we the people of the U.S. take up arms and retake control, nothing will change. Trust me world, we the average U.S. citizen are no longer in control.
Great article #52, this is very scary indeed. I shall have my “network turrets” oh high alert for any US hacker threat. As well as my “digital tanks” if you will.
@24
read up guys as ever americans claim to have invented everything. Americans most definately DID NOT invent the internet it was developed by a BRITISH citizen and then used initially by the US military in fact hang on americans have invent almost nothing ….read up on ur history….america has stole most inventions….the closest america has come to inventing anything is when a foreigner to the USA has invented something whilst living or detained there.
[quote comment="242576"]@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]
http://www.boutell.com/newfaq/history/inventednet.html
yo 69 is right the US were the first to develope a closed network it was a british guy who initially developed the open network we all now know as the world wide web. just the US helped to developed it further.
Respect @69
once again history gets distorted…….
US developed networking….
UK developed open networking…..
US advanced the open network (WWW) further.
hey my dads bigger than urs lol
who cares who developed it…….
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