Says Federal Judge in the case was wrong to ask it to violate the public BitTorrent tracker site’s user privacy rules.
TorrentSpy was once the most popular public BitTorrent tracker site around until it caught the MPAA’s attention and subsequent legal wrath. It culminated in a default judgment of some $110 million USD against the site for the alleged facilitation of copyright infringement, a judgment TorrentSpy is now appealing.
It was back in June of 2007 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.
It was hailed as 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.
According to TorrentSpy’s attorney, Ira Rothken. TorrentSpy has now decided to appeal the judgment with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
"We’re arguing the court was wrong in procedures and wrong in judgment," Rothken told CNET News yesterday. "In a one-hour hearing regarding discovery issues, the court terminated the case and didn’t give TorrentSpy a trial. We believe the court was wrong and abused its discretion. We believe the court ordered TorrentSpy to do things that (were) in violation of the site’s privacy policy, and we believe that the tension between the court’s discovery orders and user privacy rights is an important issue on appeal."
Let’s hope TorrentSpy finally gets the justice it deserves.
jared@zeropaid.com
Related Posts
- MPAA Wins $110 Million Judgement Against TorrentSpy
- TorrentSpy to Appeal $110 Million Judgment
- TorrentSpy Decides to Close Permanently
- MPAA Wins Copyright Infringement Case Against TorrentSpy
- TorrentSpy may cut off access to US visitors
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