Another one bites the dust
The content industry can scratch another notch into its legal gun this week, after BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy announced that it has voluntarily shut down as of last Monday.
“We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the TorrentSpy.com search engine to an end,†reads a message that is all that remains of the beleaguered tracker. “The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile.â€
“We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves … Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users - permanent shutdown.â€
Compared to many of its peers, TorrentSpy’s history is an unusually turbulent one. Many trackers meet their end suddenly, but TorrentSpy was not so lucky; instead, it faced a protracted battle with its foes, fending off a seemingly endless horde of litigation and skullduggery. The site’s legal woes were hallmarked by the discovery that the MPAA paid Robert Anderson, a former advertising partner with the site, $15,000 for a valuable cache of inside information he had obtained after hacking an administrator’s e-mail account, including messages, banking information, passwords, and even parts of the site’s source code.
TorrentSpy’s actions complicated its legal case, however, as court records found the site destroyed evidence and retroactively removed references to piracy on its forums. At one point, it blanked out names of popular movies with censor-like blackouts. Posts containing references to movies like “Spiderman 3†were edited – sometimes months after they were written – to something similar to “[some movie 1].â€
Eventually, TorrentSpy lost its legal case, when U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper entered a default judgment against the site and its owners for conduct she considered “obstreperous.â€
MPAA Anti-Piracy Director John Malcolm took issue with TorrentSpy’s “characterization†of its closure, noticing that its “voluntary decision conveniently ignores the fact that after two years of intense litigation by the major Hollywood studios, a federal court found TorrentSpy liable for copyright infringement.â€
Malcolm claims TorrentSpy’s shutdown – as well as the nine-figure judgment entered against the site’s owners following the MPAA’s legal triumph – is a big victory for content creators, even if the MPAA and its ilk have a long road ahead of them. “Content providers can't afford to sit by and do nothing,†said Malcolm in an interview with Ars Technica. “We've seen some successes, but there is lots of work ahead of us.â€
