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Hollywood, Courts Shuttering U.S.-Based 'Infringing' Websites

By Ryan Singel, Kevin Poulsen, Sarah Lai Stirland, Kim Zetter, and David Kravets

The Motion Picture Association of America's litigation campaign against websites accused of pointing the way to infringing movies has been racking up one U.S. courtroom victory after another.

At least four U.S.-based torrent tracking linking services has been shuttered since March, court records show. But in none of the cases did a federal judge rule on the merits of the copyright infringement allegations.

That means there is no direct U.S. legal precedent saying yea or nay to BitTorrent tracking-movie-linking sites ? although many have shuttered after being sued or threatened by litigation from the MPAA. Unanswered is the central legal question of whether such sites violate U.S. copyright law for pointing to where users can download copyrighted works from others.

Hollywood's litigation is analogous to the legal question of whether the Second Amendment to the U.S. Constitution grants individuals a right to bear arms. The Supreme Court ruled in the affirmative earlier this year, after decades of legal jousting on the question. The law book is still open in the BitTorrent context. The Supreme Court hasn't even come close to deciding the question, and Grokser(.pdf) and Napsteraren't on point.

A pending and contested case in Los Angeles federal court against IsoHuntcould bring an answer.

All the while, an untold number of freebie sites also exist overseas, including the world's largest, The Pirate Bay. While The Bay is facingcopyright charges in a Swedish court, online piracy is running rampant, so much so the U.S. government just created a copyright czar.

That said, the MPAA has eked out some small victories in its hometown U.S. District Court of Los Angeles. The most recent win came days ago against pullmylink.com, (.pdf) which linked to where copyrighted movies could be found. It's owners agreed to pull the plug and pay a $371,000 fine. Similar websites like showstash.com(.pdf) and cinematube.com(.pdf) also agreed to shutter and pay hefty fines months ago without contesting the copyright allegations.

And one of the world's most renowned torrent-tracking services, TorrentSpy, shuttered in March after it was ordered to millions in fines. But that was a default judgment, in which the judge accused the tracker of concealing evidence.

Full post as published by Threat Level on October 29, 2008 (boomark / email).