Called a "significant victory" by the MPAA, but for users it was merely a brief inconvenience as they migrated to one of the tens of thousands of other BitTorrent tracker sites there are to choose from.It was back in June of last year that a federal court ordered TorrentSpy to begin tracking visitors to the site. The BitTorrent tracker site opted to instead simply cut off access to US visitors. It apparently wasn't enough to satisfy the Federal Judge presiding in the case, even though it then became a matter of a FOREIGN SITE, HOSTED ON FOREIGN SERVERS, OWNED BY A FOREIGN INDIVIDUAL, and ACCESSIBLE ONLY TO PEOPLE OUTSIDE THE US. One would think that the site's operator would clearly thus be immune from any further harassment by this US-based court. Wrong. In October the MPAA still demanded that TorrentSpy maintain and turn over their server logs. The "Honorable" Jacqueline Chooljian, the presiding federal judge, agreed. However, on December 18th the court then in fact determined that TorrentSpy had been systematically hiding and destroying evidence, making a fair trial impossible. As a result a default judgment was ruled in the case thereby finding the site guilty of copyright infringement. So on March 24th of this year it shut its doors permanently to the world.
The loss was felt by all in the BitTorrent community, but it died a slow death after cutting off access to US visitors whom comprised a majority of the users of the site. Everyone simply migrated to other sites like Mininova, The Pirate Bay, BTJunkie, etc.. So it was really of little "significance" that the MPAA announced today that it had won a "significant victory for the major Hollywood studios" in winning a $110 million judgment against TorrentSpy other than to those behind the site who may now be subject to constant financial harassment by the MPAA. “This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites,” said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.” Yes Mr Glickman I'm sure that all of the tens of thousands of BitTorrent tracker sites that all have long since replaced TorrentSpy are worried about facing relentless litigation. At the rate the MPAA's going, about one BitTorrent tracker site taken down per year, it can never hope to possibly shut down them all. |
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MPAA would have been better off re-thinking how to use the Web to distribute content instead of frothing at the mouth and making the lawyers richer.
(P.S. it's spelled "judgment").