TorrentSpy ordered to pay the MPAA $110 million
Copyright, wrong
A JUDGE IN a Los Angeles Federal court has awarded the MPAA some $110 million in compensation from Torrentspy operator Valence Media.
The MPAA has been pursuing Torrentspy for a couple of years and the site was closed in March after being hounded by the MPAA and running out of money
Now the judge has ordered the outfit to pay compensation of $30,000 per copyright infringement and reckons the fee applies to some 3,699 films and TV shows. That comes to some $110,970,000.
Torrentspy was also accused of hiding or deleting data that might have led the autrhorities to individual file-sharers, a charge the outfit denied.
For Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, “The demise of Torrentspy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”
Torrentspy said it will appeal against the damages. µ
Comments
Sure
"The demise of Torrentspy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders _IN THE UNITED STATES_ ".Not all countries of the planet are as restrictive and anti competitive as the US. Torrentspy was an indexing/search site. None of the files were hosted on their servers. With the same train of thought you could sue Google because it's an even better torrent search site than Torrentspy was.
Pointless
They should appeal, thats just madness. How these charges are justified is beyond me when they don't actually share anything. I think I'll go sue Toyota for selling that car the hit my car the other day. Actually I'll also sue the dealership that sold the car to that lunatic.Hmm then I'll sue the dealership again for not giving me the personal information of all their customers so I can sift through and sue each of them for driving recklessly! Even if, maybe, someone else was using the car when it got in a accident.
The law suit is pointless in the end because much like my scenario new dealerships will pop up, probably 2 for every 1 that goes down since other sense the opportunity to make a dollar.
Chasing Ghosts
Don't these people realize that closing down big sites will do nothing to the multimedia pirating industry? The USERS are the problem, and since they are also the consumer, it can never end. I guess if the MPAA and RIAA keep getting their money, they don't really care that is continues. They just want the money. Problem is, the artists aren't going to see any of that, which is sad.It makes you wonder, who is the real enemy?
Only?!?
First of all let me begin with saying: HAHAHAHAHA!!!!Where exactly does the MPAA expect these guys to come up with that kind of money?
If they are REALLY lucky they might get 500k. Of course they are not doing this for money, as we all know they are already quite wealthy.
This is for shock and awe. To put the fear of the dreaded MPAA into people. Scare tactics.
What are they going to do to the TorrentSpy guys? enslave them for all eternity to pay off 110 million?
Let them tell the courts how TorrentSpy actually facilitated mass theft of intellectual property & how the people who downloaded stuff through the links in the site caused the industry massive losses.
Still peddling the same old lies & attempting to impale anyone they can.
Who needs the MPAA anyways? what is it good for??
Dumb Judge
The problem is the dumb judge didn't understand what torrentspy was doing.They were INDEXING content, similar to how Newzbin does.
The MPAA screamed piracy, showed a batch of nonsensical charts and the judge figured they were guilty.
It's about Money, the MPAA has pot of money while the average Joe doesn't.
Greed is bad...
Dear MPAA and RIAA,Sell me movies at the reasonable price of 5.99$ and I will buy them.
Continue to screw me at 19.99$ and 24.99$ and I will do whatever in my power to screw you even more by giving you a big 0.00$... and still get my movies anyway.
The situation is totally out of your control. Wakeup and realize the truth: We, the customers, are setting the rules, not you. Adapt or just die.
Ramon
*Note MPAA
1 torrent site down "torrentspy".0 torrents are removed.
0 lost in revenue of MPAA.
0 point to do what you did.
0 people will stop using bit torrent as a tool to share.
0 possibilities that $110m make sense.
the 0 list can go on forever, the point is, MPAA you guys make too much money, cheating your customers, in return, we are a smarter generation, we will "test drive" before buying your sh!tty products, and you are not happy that we don't pay you to "test drive". silly rabbit, silly babies, cry cry cry, here. have a lolipop to SUCK ON!
long live torrents, we will have a server on Mars very soon!! MPAA: "shut it down, oh shut it down, damn you Mars people."
Sue Google, Live Search!
Yeah, Google and Live Search turn out with better torrent links than Torrentspy. Google and Live Search finish what Torrentspy and ISOHUNT can't.No, seriously, All-good-no-evil Google can and does reveal more links to torrent files.
They also help you with their "did you mean" option if you misspelled the movie/music name!
A whole load of legislation
What a shame that the judiciary there is less well informed than me, and most people here, with no formal legal training or expertise to speak of.The US is already trying to physically police the world in its own awful way; it seems it's continuing to try to do the same thing online.
Just to help out the MPAA, I'll start a little list that they can work from. Once they've finished off all these, maybe we can all send them weekly PDFs with lists of more sites to legislate against?
newzbin, binsearch, mininova, torrentz, thepiratebay, btjunkie, ...
or maybe just start restricting protocols? IRC is used for illicit downloading, that should be out. Usenet, Bittorrent, FastTrack, Overnet, Gnutella... oh, yeah, the RIAA's already taken down Overnet...