Intellectual Property Law

TorrentSpy Shutters in Wake of Court Order

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

TorrentSpy, one of the biggest BitTorrent tracking sites until the federal courts got a hold of it lasts year, is shutting down, according to a message on its site.

The site, which had claimed it was the victim of a hack by the Motion Picture Association of America, pulled the plug on U.S. users last year rather than comport with a court order to log their identities. Now it has thrown in the towel and is out of service.

"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," TorrentSpy wrote its users.

The MPAA sued the site and the movie industry won a federal court order demanding the chronicling of American users who were using the site largely to purloin copyrighted movies and other material. Rather than comport, the site disallowed users with U.S.-based IP addresses. Traffic plummeted, leading to the site's closure this week.

Still, the U.S. courts have never directly ruled on the legality of U.S-based torrent tracking services like TorrentSpy. A judge sided against the Los Angeles-based site, but for procedural reasons did not rule on the merits of the case. An MPAA case against Isohunt is pending in Los Angeles federal court.

See Also:

• Analysis: Legality of Torrent Tracking Sites Unresolved Despite ...
• MPAA Paying Hacker for Purloined TorrentSpy Emails Not Illegal ...
• TorrentSpy Founders Create Copyright Filtering Company
• TorrentSpy Case Shows Privacy Policies and Practices Protect ...
• Pirate Bay Future Uncertain After Operators Busted
• "Independence Will Be Punished in the Name of Copyright Protection ...
• Tagoo Emerging as the Russian Napster?

Full post as published by Threat Level on March 27, 2008 (boomark / email).