Court records: MPAA sought info on PirateBay founders

TorrentSpy may be gone but its attorneys continue to allege in court that the motion picture industry engaged in a spying campaign against the company as well as others, including the Pirate Bay.

TorrentSpy, a BitTorrent search engine that was driven out of business last March as a result of fighting a copyright suit filed by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), is seeking another chance to argue that the MPAA wronged the company when it purchased information obtained from a hacker who had pilfered company e-mail.

A federal judge threw out TorrentSpy's hacker complaint last August, saying it was unclear whether federal wiretapping laws covered the interception of e-mails. On Thursday, TorrentSpy's attorneys filed an appeal with the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, asking that it reverse the trial court's dismissal of the case.

Included in that heavily redacted legal filing was more detail about the kind of information the MPAA sought from Robert Anderson, who has acknowledged hacking into TorrentSpy's e-mail system. According to TorrentSpy's legal filing, when Anderson initially offered to sell information to the MPAA he promised much.

Anderson wrote to the MPAA: "We can provide the names, address, and phone (numbers) of the owners of Torrentspy.com and Thepiratebay.org--along with evidence, including correspondence between the two companies."

Dean Garfield, an MPAA executive, gave the following testimony, according to the court records: "We were going to get information about the location and identity of the people who were running Torrentspy, as well as information related to a general conspiracy and relationship between Torrentspy and a number of other prominent services including ThePirateBay."

Representatives from the MPAA have always said that Anderson had already obtained the information before offering it to them and told them he had obtained the TorrentSpy e-mails legally. The MPAA did not respond to interview requests.

TorrentSpy's attorney, Ira Rothken, said last August: "We believe that the MPAA, when it paid $15,000 for about 30 pages of e-mails, knew or should have known they were involved in purchasing something in a wrongful manner."

[Pete Bardo]

Sure, MPAA, read everyone's email. There's nothing wrong with that, is there? If they wanted to keep it private they would have encrypted it. They are geeks, aren't they? Shouldn't they know better?

Sure am glad I live in a free country that respects the privacy of its citizens.

[gerrrg]

Either the MPAA is brimming with idiots, or they make us out for idiots to believe them. This corporate vigilantism takes MPAA down the same path of the Sony rootkit and the Dunn-HP spygate. Some lessons are apparently never learned.

[knotbeer]

How does one obtain the company's property legally? What makes this legal to sell to another organization? I don't get it.

What does the MPAA think they are accomplishing? The people who use this stuff mostly do it for software or finding stuff that you simply can't find online even FOR purchase.......... On top of that, most of the people who do download movies can't afford it because they are kids without any kind of income, which the MPAA probably doesn't understand since the kids they deal with are all little rich bastards. They aren't gaining anything from this.

I am 26 and have a professional career. I purchase movies from a DVD club and have a proud collection of 500+ movies covering my wall. When I was in high school do you think I would ever have such a collection? NOPE! I used to use 0-day warez sites that were posted on IRC rooms to get my stuff and I thought I was l33t.

[knotbeer]

......... On second thought, why don't they get the idiots that copy movies to DVD-Rs and sell them on eBay so they can rip off people like they did to my girlfriend. Now THAT would be satisfying to read about.

[krosavcheg]

Hacking is illegal, unencrypted email isn't. (Editors' note: Personal attack removed.)

[wango2007]

The music business has a failed business model in the Internet AGE. Rather than admitting that they unlease the Gestopo power of the MPAA.

It is time someone broke the back of the MPAA. All they can do is kick down doors, and that's stupid. It's time for a massive uprising of the Internet, using blogs, Twitter and all the rest to boycott the purchase of all music for a month or a year.

It is past time to send the MPAA a message they'll never forget.

[CyR00k]

Just a minor correction wango the MPAA is an association of movie studios they don't actually produce anything nor do they sell anything, studios have to pay the MPAA so that they can produce movies. It's a screwy deal that goes back to the 1920's or so when the American Catholic League was threatening the studios and theaters.

The RIAA is, again, a collection of music studios again they don't produce any content nor do they sell songs, same deal as above. Though, it wasn't the catholics I can't remember who started that incident.

That being said, I think people should not buy CD's or DVD's, all of your favorite radio stations world wide have a streaming audio signal, there are numerous sites like hulu.com and last.fm that are free with an internet connexion and in most countries you get that for free, or can find a free location. So go for get people to do things that are in their best interest.

[Blackmagic12345]

If they sut down TPB i will sue them them effin bastards

[webrecordcb2]

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[carwaterguide]

Try these sites if you want to waste some more time and money

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