Federal judge entered a default judgment against the BitTorrent tracker site after finding that it ‘engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence.’
Chalk up a hollow win for the MPAA for it was announced yesterday that Federal Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Los Angeles has terminated an ongoing lawsuit against the once-mighty TorrentSpy in favor of the MPAA. Once one of the world’s most popular public BitTorrent tracker sites, it’s now more of an afterthought than anything to users after it decided a while back to cut off access by US visitors.
If you recall, back in May the same judge ordered TorrentSpy to begin tracking US visitors to the site by creating and handing over server logs in violation of the sites explicit privacy policy prohibiting such action.
Rather than violate this policy it instead decided to simply cut off access to the site by US visitors. You’d think the matter would’ve ended there, for by technically not being accessible to US visitors it would seem that the case therefore has no business being in US courts.
Unfortunately for TorrentSpy, and for actually all websites who would like to believe that it isn’t subject to the laws and regulations of every single country in the world simply because they can log onto the site, the case against it continued.
The court in fact found yesterday that TorrentSpy has been systematically hiding and destroying evidence making a fair trial impossible. As a result a default judgment against it has been ruled in the case thereby finding it guilty of copyright infringement.
This is believed to be the first time a judge has ordered a defendant to log visitor activity and then hand over the information to the plaintiff.
In its decision, the court ruled 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 court found that the evidence was “not deleted or modified negligently, but intentionally in direct response to the institution of this lawsuit.” Observing that defendants “already had been subjected to lesser sanctions in this case”, including a fine for $30,000 for violation of a court order, the court concluded that the “harsh sanction” of terminating the defendants’ case was the only appropriate remedy.
The evidence destroyed included forum postings with references to copyright infringement, site directories referencing copyrighted works, and user IP addresses.
“Defendants’ conduct during discovery in this case has been obstreperous,” the court concluded. “They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in an effort to hide evidence of such destruction.”
“The court’s decision is a significant victory for MPAA member companies and sends a potent message to future defendants that this egregious behavior will not be tolerated by the judicial system,” said John Malcolm, Executive Vice President and Director of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations for the MPAA. “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.”
On News.com, Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, called the ruling “unprecedented” and noted how the court’s decision could have a chilling effect on e-commerce and digital entertainment sites.
“In general, a defendant is not required to create new records to hand over in discovery,” von Lohmann said. “We shouldn’t let Web site logging policies be set by litigation.”
But, Rothken did note that since TorrentSpy’s servers are located in the Netherlands that “As a practical matter it is business as usual for the site because it is unlikely that a U.S. court could impact international use.”
Either way, the issue of network neutrality should now be on the forefront of everybody’s minds. Would we in the US tolerate similar brazen lawsuits? It’s highly unlikely.
What hopefully has to really bug the MPAA though is that there’s about a thousand new sites that have long since taken its place. Talk about a waste of time, money, and effort. But, I guess somebody has to keep lawyers employed and the MPAA and RIAA are doing an excellent job. Despite the fact that they have done little to stem the tide of file-sharing and P2P they continue to pour money into a losing battle.
FOR A LIST OF BITTORRENT TRACKER SITES CLICK HERE
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is this going to mean that the site will go down and they will go after the users?
No they dont have anything to go after users with thats kind of why TorrentSpy got busted.
Yes they won! What a victory! Oh wait a minute……There’s another gazillion sites on the net that are a HUNDRED TIMES BETTER then Torrentspy………HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH LOSERS!
Would we in the US tolerate similar brazen lawsuits? ??
let’s think about that. Most sites (porn) eg: arn’t tollerated in IRAN Should Iran impose it’s law against the site owners?
I would expect to see an appeal. An unbiased L.A. judge? Yeah right.
An idiot’s ruling like saying internet is used only for hackers/pirates and since 30% are we should shut it down; Also RAM is always wiped as needed by the server without user control ruling will be revoked.
I think they’re attacking them for keeping the forms clean the reason why they know there should be something is they probably planted it then when the admins deleted the post they called foul as they should have logged it EVEN THOUGH there’s no proof that they came from the US as they blocked all US traffic.
Bloody double standards is what it is let spy just lay there it’s just a shell of what it used to be and with the way that they keep attacking I’m surprised if anyone in the US is not using a proxy anymore for anything shadier than taking a basket of cookies to grandmother’s house otherwise the big bad RIAA might just try and take a chomp out of them…
Wait a minute isn’t that a story as well damn where’s our woodsman when we need ‘em!
you know the netherlands needs to make up some law that the MPAA’s site violates and then sue them in a netherlands court. and make sure the judge is in it too so he can instantly hand down a ruling.
mpaa may have won but torrentspy could still refuse to hand over the servers and refuse to shut down resulting a forced action (raid).
or appeal to the next court.
DoA=Dead on Appeal.
Since no one can be required to create new records and since the court doesn’t even have jurisdiction since the servers are not in the country this ruling will most likely be overturned. Unless Torrentspy has assets in the US or its administrators are US citizens there is really nothing to seize in support of a judgment and no one to hold to account.
DoA=Dead on Appeal.
Since no one can be required to create new records and since the court doesn’t even have jurisdiction since the servers are not in the country this ruling will most likely be overturned. Unless Torrentspy has assets in the US or its administrators are US citizens there is really nothing to seize in support of a judgment and no one to hold to account.