TorrentSpy looses copyright suit

A judge in California today dropped the bomb on Torrent Spy, rather than conducting a trial, the judge found that TorrentSpy willfully destroyed or altered discoverable evidence, and so prejudiced the case that there is nothing left to do but go right to the penalty phase. There will be a penalty, and it is likely to be huge.

Torrentspy has lost their case, and been accused of obstructing justice (earlier this year they had cut off access for American users, and had their internal communications hacked by the MPAA as well) leading to those actions meaning that the case cannot be fairly tried in the US Courts.

A federal judge has ruled against the BitTorrent indexing service TorrentSpy.com saying that its hiding and destruction of evidence made a fair trial impossible. A Los Angeles court agreed with the Motion Picture Association of America’s attorneys that the extraordinarily harsh sanction of terminating the case was necessary because TorrentSpy operators’ actions impacted the ability for the movie studios to prove its case. “The court finds that plaintiffs have suffered prejudice, to the extent that a rightful decision is not possible,” the ruling said. Source: News.com

What is interesting is that this case has effectively been terminated there is only one-way to go, that is to get sanctions and dollars from Torrentspy. That will more likely end up being a hefty fine because the court found that there was willful destruction of information on the part of TorrentSpy.

This is a pseudo victory for the MPAA, with TorrentSpy most likely not having anything near the amount of money per item, with items in the hundreds of thousands that could be an infringing work. More likely, they will close down the shell of TorrentSpy, and move onto another system and another site, while the lawyers argue over what is left of the carcass. No one is going to get any money out of this, nor will it in the longer run deter Bittorrent file sharing.