TorrentSpy, One Year After the Shutdown
Written by Ernesto on March 24, 2009Exactly a year ago one of the largest torrent sites shut down for good, and a month later the owner was ordered to pay a 110 million dollar fine. We catch up with TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnell, who’s still in court fighting the MPAA, to see how he views the developments of the past year.
Only two years ago, TorrentSpy was the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, competing with Mininova and The Pirate Bay. Its future was uncertain though, as the site found itself embroiled in a costly legal battle with the MPAA.
The case was initiated in January 2006 and in the summer of 2007 a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to start logging all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities and these were to be handed over to the MPAA. In a response to this decision, TorrentSpy decided to block access to all US visitors instead.
The trouble for the torrent site was not over though. On March 24 2008 the site went offline and a month later TorrentSpy’s owner was ordered to pay a $110 million fine after the court terminated the case. This decision is currently under appeal.
Today marks the passing of a year since the site’s closure, so TorrentFreak took the opportunity to catch up with TorrentSpy owner Justin Bunnell to see where he stands 12 months on. We began by asking him whether he believes he made the right decision when he took the site offline.
“Most decisions you can review with hindsight and decide if it was good or bad. However, this is one that I still question even today,” Justin told us. “We took the site offline to show we were serious about settlement – we figured if they hated the site and therefore us, taking the site down would make them happy.”
However, the MPAA didn’t back off, quite the opposite. “Their bewildering reaction was to get angry instead. In short, we took the site down so it would stop being such a contentious issue with the courts and I would probably make the same decision today,” Justin said.
Although the site has ceased to exist, together with one of the largest BitTorrent communities, Justin is still dealing with the TorrentSpy legacy in court.
When we asked him what he missed the most, Justin said he didn’t “miss out” on any of the downside fun. “It is sad that a vibrant community that shared ideas and opinions about technology, politics, society and other speech has been obliterated, but the sad fact is that Goliath wins most of the time,” he told.
“I have become cynical about the fairness and standard of justice in our courts and political process,” Justin said commenting on the legal proceedings involving his site, and the future of file sharing in general. “I see very little opposition to more and more restrictions on the actions and speech of the Public to ‘protect’ the entertainment industry, especially now.”
A handful of torrent sites that are willing to stand up in court are no match for the powerful lobby of the entertainment industry according to Justin. “Money is the gas of the political engine and in 2008 alone the entertainment industry gave $47M to politicians. What do you think these profit obsessed corporations expect in return?”
It is indeed sad to see that lobbyists have manage to influence lawmakers into some of the most idiotic decisions. Change has not come yet for P2P apparently. We wish Justin all the best, and hope that his appeal is a success.
Previously: Disaster! No One Pirates Or Downloads Our Music For Free
Next: ISP Refuses to Admit Customers Are BitTorrent Pirates
48 Responses
yeah its a shame :(
Very sad indeed …
Let hope the people will win in the end …
The sad truth here is maybe they should have weighed up the options sooner and quit while they were ahead…
We all hated it when sites like suprnova seemed to be quiting but they ultimately were saving their skins before it got to deep.
I second on 1) & 2)’s comments
“I see very little opposition to more and more restrictions on the actions and speech of the Public to ‘protect’ the entertainment industry, especially now.”
So true, yet, so untrue. Maybe true in the United States, but there are some countries where people are definitely opposed to the restrictions: Canada, Spain, Sweden. Even for them, though, it is still true to an extent, because those who are against the restrictions still are not vocal at all. But the fact is that if at any time, people decided all at once to unite, then things could change. And thus there is only one way: pirates of the world, unite!
“A handful of torrent sites that are willing to stand up in court are no match for the powerful lobby of the entertainment industry according to Justin.”
But if they get public support from vast amounts of people, who are willing to donate financially to their defense, then surely the situation would change.
I love the “idiotic decisions” link… SO TRUE!
I wonder what his view would be on the final outcome of The Pirate Bay trial, it’s a pity you didn’t ask him that question.
so he caved in to their demands and they remained unsatisfied.. they continued to kick him around while he lay in the gutter and ask for $110 mil
yup looks like it’s best to go down fighting
No justice no peace.
We have to eradicate all these corporate parasites starting with the entairtainement companies.
It’s a shame that P2P is still looked down upon by politicians in the 21st century. They don’t see the possibilities. Schooling isn’t working, “we’re teaching children that want to be poets and musicians science, and we’re teaching children that want to be scientists poetry and music”, to steal from John Gatto.
P2P is a tool to be used to spread information as widely as possible. With P2P, we can spread the things these people need to become what they want to be, be it scientists, musicians, whatever.
At the end of the day, politics is an illusion of choice and only the money-hungry truly succeed.
Just run the trackers in jurisdictions that don’t give a shit .. like Ghana or sth. :D
@po
Niet they kick him around because he refused to be a tool for MPAA.
@El Pirata
spam your “l33t” site elsewhere.
I love how the industry thinks that everyone has millions of dollars stashed somewhere. Bloody brilliant.
@12 El Muppet
everyone is waiting to visit your infected garbage site.
enjoy gettin ass raped in prison then man…..unlucky
Used to love the comments on Torrentspy, gave great info (instead of the Youtube-like crap TPB comments often degenerate into). Then the comments were disabled for months and the junk torrents flooded in. In the end, nothing of value was lost, unfortunately.
Ya its pretty fucked up!!
Q:”The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities and these were to be handed over to the MPAA. In a response to this decision, TorrentSpy decided to block access to all US visitors instead.”
A:He did the right thing fuck though greedy bastards. They just wanted to get that info and charge all the users for all the content they pirated.
Q:”On March 24 2008 the site went offline and a month later TorrentSpy’s owner was ordered to pay a $110 million fine after the court terminated the case. This decision is currently under appeal.”
A: They got some nerve, after he refused to help those greedy bastards. They just kept coming backing for more. As if their pot of gold wasn’t already overflowing.
I have read tons of info of piracy or p2p sites getting sued and have concluded this. They are not losing that much money, only about 8-12 percent of the US pirate movies, games, etc.
But out of that 8-12, 5-8 percent buy dvds, go the the theaters, watch it on tv, buy games for systems that require a chip to work such as xbox, playstation, etc. Rent movies to copy then later return. Some buy movies if they don’t want a crappy cam. There is a lot of pirates that pay money for their products.
Now we get down to the 1-2 of 8-12 percent who only download to get a preview of an episode, etc. Who may get a dvd for free but will but the dvd for better quality if they like it, etc.
The other 2 percent only pirate and do not pay for crap. They either hate the company or they are too poor to buy anything. Therefore they are only losing 2 percent, which to them is pocket money. They probably wipe their ass with 100 dollar bills.
Now we get down to my reasoning:) Pirates have been on this planet for years from the day we were sailing on ships and hijacking them or stealing gold to now. Where there are goods there are pirates, where there is something valuable there are pirates. Its the cycle of life. Just as where there is prey there is a predator. You will never get rid of us, you may never stop us and even if you do we will come back to haunt you. So I suggest these big companies back off and leave us alone or we might just rise up as a group and take matters into are own hands.
Wow, I remember TorrentSpy, that was my favourite site. Good memories. For those that want to see what it looked like way back when, check this out: http://tinyurl.com/cpyapd [web.archive.org]
@18: “Now we get down to my reasoning:) Pirates have been on this planet for years from the day we were sailing on ships and hijacking them or stealing gold to now.”
Yes, pirates in that sense are common thieves, stealing actual property and murdering and killing people.
What has that got to do with copying digital content?
“Where there are goods there are pirates, where there is something valuable there are pirates.”
WTF?
“Its the cycle of life. Just as where there is prey there is a predator.”
WTF?
“You will never get rid of us, you may never stop us and even if you do we will come back to haunt you.”
Erm, right – widespread piracy, accessible to large sections of the population via networks – has only been around for approximately 10-15 years, digital piracy of any sort really only since the late 70’s. Seeing as most people here had no clue or access to home computers since the very early 80’s digital piracy is very new indeed.
I’d be careful in your predictions about piracy: give it 5, 10, 15 years or w/e years and most new games potentially will be server based with little to no home computing power (similar to this: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/24/onlive-killed-the-game-console-star/ – not saying it will be that but you see where it’s heading) …
With Palladium like features music and video transfers could be similarly locked down in new iterations of personal computers – with no facility for it to be optional.
PS3 has not been hacked – until it is I’m thinking it’s possible to make unbreakable copyright protection given the right hardware.
gawd some anti-piracy dumbasses have already started comparing piracy to communism… before some of you start waving your flags and preaching about democracy you should do some reading on communism before your democratic ideology is blatantly manipulated for the benefit of the entertainment industry. communisim contradicts capatalism, not democracy, it’s “stalinism” which opposes democracy.
why the hell they think this poor bastard has $110,000,000 usd.. maybe he get lucky and have the currency changed to yen.
If politicians too 47 million dollars, I would say it wasn’t just the corporations who are profit obsessed, but politicians as well.
But, that’s the advantages of gaining political power – you get the make the rules that end up profiting you in other areas as well.
Wow, that’s rough. $110 million dollars! That’s just ridiculous. It’s laws like these that make me disgusted..
I hope it completely gets thrown out soon.
FYI did you know that there is over 8,000 cases petitioned to the supreme court in the USA and only around 80 are actually heard!
is that justice? i think not! our gov dont care about us with a justice system set up and guaranteed to fail!!! when our forefathers set the system into place the supreme court was not ment to handle a whopping 350mil+ population. so there for corporations that have the $$$ can destroy a small man such as Justin here and not worry of any unconstitutional issues any of the lower courts may commit against him.
when it comes to cooperate injustice such as what is happening to Justin he has little chance against the illegal actions of such a cooperation.
i am betting the judge that handed down judgment here did not even recite a law that was broken… this is also very common in the IRS cases.
Good luck Justin!!! i feel for ya man!!!
Justin maybe you will read this maybe you wont… a bit of advice from me… stop fighting it protect your assets wait 2 yrs and claim BK!!! its not worth to waste your health mind and soul in these ppl ultimately you will not prevail
It’s easy to get bogged down in the details of cases like this and conclude that we are getting nowhere. But it’s just not true.
The problem of allowing people 100% flexible access to media at cheap prices while still paying the creator is one that will be solved. There is too much potential profit from a system that makes all parties happy.
A solution will be found. It will probably be some tiny startup who finds it. And the existing powerbloc of MPAA/RIAA and the publishers is probably going to have to fall over before we make any progress.
But we will eventually get there, don’t get too depressed. There is just far too much at stake for this stalemate to continue forever.
In the meantime people like this guy and the PB guys will get caught up in expensive legal battles and more often than not, the corporates will win. It’s a shame, and I feel for the guys who are getting bankrupted along the way.
But it’s only temporary. let’s face it, the site admins are getting done because they are enabling illegal acts. Nobody should try to make out that there’s nothing illegal going on, that won’t help anybody. We will continue to have this collatoral damage until a workable solution is in place.
Best wishes to Justin. I hope he doesn’t end up bankrupt or in jail. Without people like him we wouldn’t be able to show the world how much this issue means to us.
Someone earlier mentioned lawless places like ghana as somewhere you could put a server. Unfortunately, a country like ghana is so corrupt that the MPAA/RIAA can easily just pay off the government and legal system and they would probably get people put in jail forever. it needs to be in a country that won’t enforce copyright laws but is civilised enough to not fall for bribes.
if you think the power these guys have been able to wield with the U.S governments is scary\crazy,just watch and wait.i downloaded afew alex jones docos,including the latest “the obama deception”.(the only non copyrighted things ive ever downloaded!,lol).im not a conspiracy theorist or a religious nut but that shit is crazy!.im married to an american outside the U.S and after watching that i aint never stepping foot on U.S soil!
Wouldn’t it be easier for him to lose and file for Ch.7 bankruptcy. There’s no way he has $110m, so let them liquidate whatever asset he still has and get this over with. It’s not like this is a criminal case (with possible jail time) like TPB guys are facing.
That was a depressing read… I’m more optimistic though. The internet will prevail.
allow me to explain one thing for an above poster
example
you have no money
you will not contribute to said economy
SIMPLE
so if by chance you acquire anyhitng is it a true loss?
NO
they will tell you it is but it is not
@26: yeah, this movie is about as entertaining as the obama page on conservapedia :)
All the best Justin, I still miss TorrentSpy
@33
one thing a lot of you ppl dont realize… this type of gov has been around for years since the romans… it has never died (the idea) remember history the romans could not beat Hannibal so they just sat back and went after the weak (the ones giving refuge to him). that was then this is now and same gov system is in power. now if you kill a few of them they will just be replaced…and life will go on as normal…
no one can defeat this monster that is in power now save 1!!!
So, are the guys at the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) going to help them?
“Wow, that?s rough. $110 million dollars! That?s just ridiculous. It?s laws like these that make me disgusted..”
But this could be balanced if all pirates would unite, and donate money to a central cause, so as to form a good well-funded defense against the MAFIAA. Only if pirates unite will there be monetary resources enough to fight back against the MAFIAA.
“no one can defeat this monster that is in power now save 1!!!”
Yes, this monster can still be defeated. The United States is still a free country. If people vocally opposed the MAFIAA, then they could be defeated easily. Only through the public opinion can the MAFIAA be defeated. And the way to do that is to unite.
There needs to be a pirates’ union to do political campaigning against the MAFIAA. If there is no such pirates’ union, then the MAFIAA will almost certainly get their way eventually. Pirates of the world, unite!
Ok.
I read the comments and not all say..pirates unite. But some do.
So How do we unite if it is at all possible. I would think we need some forum or something. But then again isn’t that what TPB is, not the tracker, but the party, it is a where people unite and fight lobyism.
So then it means that already we unite but being distributed and not just one unit. If we become one unit, we become to easy to squash. So I would say, keep doing what you are doing, distribute the society so that they cant stop us.
For the talk about computing over internet, that also happens today, just maybe not so much about the 3D games. You can play online in the browser on many sites and also I guess on the phone.
Now here my say on why it will never just be the future. Its about competition. There will always be people who want the most powerful games running on their computer instead of some ugly no worth internet game. If all the big guys stop doing performe high end gaming, some other will take the bait instead and they will have the whole market then. That is just one reason, but if you think about it, there are to many things that can go wrong playing over the internet. Although there are alot of people who don’t understand the meaning of internet streaming games, so it will be possible to fool a few.
But I really hope they do this, and then they will loose costumers like a waterfall, and so new game companies with new improved ideas will start to grow. Dont forget that gaming started with few people interested in programming games, and some had such a great idea that they actually earned money doing so.
So Im trying to say that they could easilly create such a perfect DRM device, but only hope that people are willing to buy it hehe.
This incoherent crap ‘interview’ was a complete waste of time – boiled down, it is just one quitter making lame excuses for another.
You may not have noticed, but for the other side this is all part of the larger class war, and they aim to ‘negociate’ with the enemy only when in a position to dictate the terms of your surrender.
So shape up and organise to resist and win, or be enslaved.
Everyone has a part to play — Rome wasn’t burnt in a day !!
Rest in piece torrentspy, you brought the crowd at shoutwire together and brought about it’s golden age.
PS: … To the Publisher …
No, I WILL NOT ‘watch my language’, you slimy whore sidedrip, so don’t f**king humiliate yourself by begging.
Sincerely, etc., UNF
Those guys that run the music industry harbor the most hatred amongst all the hate mongers in the world, maybe Hitler had reasons afterall.
@41 bowelmover
But unlike the situation with Hitler, at least we still have political freedom. Will we toss our political freedom away and sit here, doing nothing, and let the MAFIAA achieve all of its aims?
We should all organize a simple street protest against the MAFIAA, for the lack of a better idea. At least something is better than nothing, and a street protest is nothing. Pirates of the world, unite! Organize some kind of street protest as a kind of token effort, even if it shall be ineffective. Are you with me? If you are, say “aye!”
im sad to see you go justin but it seems to me that if the “GOLIATH” sees anyone having fun they need to either profit from it or shut it down cause they know that its not $$$ that buys happiness and in turn need to oust you so they feel better about their addiction to profit fishing.
I’m at the point in my life, looking back on all the things governments have been doing and anarchy is looking really good through my window!!! stay strong Justin!!
Torrent sites are havens for property theft.
That said so are a dozen other regular web page indexing search engines. Where does the witch hunt stop? What more do we sacrifice to swell the balance sheets of large corporate interests?
Simply, There has been always been theft and there always will be.
Entertainment is a luxury and the more there is the more each of us wants.
Provide quality, convenience and price and we will give you our dollars.
Free media from a torrent isn’t free in peace of mind. Each of us knows that something of worth is being taken and feels guilty for doing so.
Make your service satisfy the need for instant gratification, let each of us quiet that small voice inside and make us feel good about supporting the artists and technicians that created it by providing a convenient and secure method of payment.
Never make restrictions on how your customer can use their purchase.
Intimidating your customers by punishing other customers doesn’t make money for you. Entertainment is a desirable luxury that becomes more desirable as we are exposed to it.
A large library of music. games, movies makes a better customer.
@42
your conception is wrong about Hitler depending on time your time line of him that is what becomes of him you talk of his demise the man was a political genus of his time most all his ppl believed i him in the beginning. of which Hitler prospered and so did Germany for most of his time in power. his demise came quickly when it happened as he turned the world against his crazy ideas.
but this seems to be the direction the world gov are taking today is what he offered in the beginning it sounds great on paper but of which can only lead down a very dark bleak roads for all of us!!!
FUCK THE LAW….TORRENT ALL DAY !!!!
oh yes! I found shoutwire via Torrentspy and I must say that I would probably be a less informed, less free-thinking individual if I didn’t. I owe a great bit of that to Justin. Don’t give up man! Be strong!
politicians should stay in politics period. they shouldn’t be allowed to get any sort of money, especially not the music industry, or any type of industry! i mean what the hell is this? can you pay a guy on the street to go beat the sh1t of someone? NO! it’s illegal, so why are they doing it? hypocrites plain and simple.
Politics in the U.S. was originally a voluntary, service-oriented calling. Politicians worked normal jobs, and were given little or no compensation. Of course, this changed at some point (probably with the increasing level of complexity in the American political system).
Even today, politicians rarely accept money from lobbies for personal gain. They accept it, instead, to fund their favorite projects and reelection campaigns. The whole political problem boils down to corporate lobbies and special interest projects as opposed to personal greed.
That being said, Torrentspy’s legal troubles are a result of a lack of understanding of BitTorrent. Trying to get a judge or jury of people over forty to understand that no files are hosted on a tracker is incredibly difficult. This lack of understanding causes that tracker to be made the target of everyone’s frustrations instead of the real criminals…the users.
Even so, BitTorrent trackers are different from search engines such as google, yahoo, or ask. Those search engines cooperate with artists to curb infringement, whereas some torrent sites are extreme opponents to any censorship. Even those that do try to stop infringement, are simply treated as if they were TPB.
In the good ol’ days, there was the scene and a few communities of talented people who pirated whatever they wanted to. They did NOT do this for personal gain, but rather for a challenge. Frankly, p2p networks are ruining piracy by distributing stolen goods to the masses who could not have stolen the media themselves. This results in much larger domestic losses to piracy than ever before, causing a panic in the industries (rightly so).
This is not a BBS, this is the internet. It is large scale and will one day have billions of users. This form of mass piracy is NOT sustainable. p2p lamers have DRIVEN corporations to suing their own customers. If p2p pirates keep this up, eventually you will kill the groups who produce the stolen goods you acquire, along with the industry.
So, later all. Long live the scene, and inb4 TL:DR.
$110 million is a biiiiiig fine , but one that this dude wont be able to pay so he probably wont need to stress over it too much . Speaking from a musician’s point of view , I think it’s cool to see some views from people on here who understand that if musicians cant get paid for their work then they wont be able to record and get their music out to the public as they would want to .
If I need to get some dollars in to pay the rent and put food on the table for my family I expect to get paid for my music . If I believe in a cause and want to put on a gig or give a track to a charity I support or put a couple of free tracks on a blog then that’s for me to decide .
I cant speak about Justin Bunnell cos I’ve never met him , but I am very suspicious about one of the dudes who owns The Pirate Bay – the one who is the heir to a multi-million dollar crispbread empire ! lol . Sounds like the missing scene from Spinal Tap !!!
I think people like him are just money-obsessed hypocrites trying to build personal website fortunes on the back of musicians and producers work – hope he gets everything that’s coming to him – he sounds like a shitty little SOB
“Pirating” has changed the way consumers consume. They purchase just as much as they did before, but now they can pick and choose more carefully what it is they feel is worth paying for. And in many cases, still view films in the theatre first because they are paying for the experience. The big image and sound.
Independent or lesser known artists have a much bigger soapbox to stand on in order to turn heads and gather attention. Entertainment markets can no longer be cornered easily. The consumers cash has been spread out over a much larger surface area.
Example: HEDpe use to be on a major label. THat label forced their creative input on them and the band did not do well. HED pe now resides on an independent label under their own creative direction and still sruvive with a relativly large fanbase. Before the digital age, this was not a healthy alternative. But the MUSIC is thier passion and the fans see the genuity of it so they are willing to pay.
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