TorrentSpy, the illegal file sharing site has been ordered to pay $110m in damages to the Motion Picture Association of America for copyright infringement.
The ruling from a US court comes just a few weeks after the site was shut down. The MPAA first began legal action against the torrent site in February 2006.
The four-page ruling form Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said that TorrentSpy had to pay $30,000 for “each of the 3,699 infringements shown.” The judgment is one of the largest fines ever for piracy.
Dan Glickman, chairman of the MPAA said, “This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites…the demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios.”
TorrentSpy utilized a legitimate file sharing technology called Bit Torrent to allow users to exchange large files over the internet without the need for a central server. We can’t help but wonder how long it will be before the rest of the file sharing site’s on the web get shut down.
The page on their web site reads;
We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.
The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. 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.
It was a wild ride,
The TorrentSpy Team
TorrentSpy’s parent company Valence Media was owned by Justin Bunnell and Wes Park. Both of whom have filed for bankruptcy.
No Comment Received
Leave A Reply