Studios win $111 million judgment against TorrentSpy

In a major win for Hollywood studios, a California federal judge has ordered TorrentSpy to pay nearly $111 million in damages for infringing the copyright of thousands of films and TV shows through its BitTorrent search engine.

The Los Angeles judge, U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, also issued a permanent injunction against TorrentSpy, which was once one of the most popular indexes of BitTorrent files before it shut down in March after a two-year copyright battle with the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA). The company closed its site on March 24, citing financial hardship and a desire to protect the privacy of its users.

MPAA CEO Dan Glickman said the judgment should serve as warning to other search services of file-sharing applications.

"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," he said in a statement.

The judge ordered TorrentSpy to pay $30,000 per copyright infringement--for 3,699 films and shows. That works out to be worth $110,970,000.

How that amount will be paid is unclear. A call to TorrentSpy's attorney was not immediately returned. (Editor's note: Click here for the follow-up story with the TorrentSpy attorney's prickly reaction.)

The judgment puts a fine point on another long battle between technologists and copyright holders.

The studios originally sued TorrentSpy in February 2006, alleging that the site promoted and contributed to online copyright infringement by helping people locate illegally copied films and television shows on the Internet. Last December, a federal judge sided with the MPAA by saying that TorrentSpy had destroyed evidence that would make a fair trial possible.

According to the court, TorrentSpy operators had intentionally modified or deleted directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; concealed IP addresses of users; and withheld the names and addresses of forum moderators. The company had previously been fined $30,000 for violations of discovery orders and were warned of severe sanctions if they continued to ignore the orders.

TorrentSpy's attorney, Ira Rothken, called that ruling "draconian in nature and unfair." He said he did not believe any data was intentionally destroyed, and that some actions were taken to protect the privacy of TorrentSpy users.

Rothken also said at the time that TorrentSpy would appeal any decision on damages.

Still, the permanent injunction prohibits Valence Media, operator of TorrentSpy, from engaging in any activity that "encourages, promotes or solicits, or knowingly facilitates, enables or assists, copyright infringement," according to the court.

CNET News.com's Elinor Mills contributed to this report.

[W2Kuser]

And yet Google, Yahoo and all other internet indexing services are somehow magically exempt from "encourages, promotes or solicits, or knowingly facilitates, enables or assists, copyright infringement," ... ?

[Brentbb0]

Be happy this is the case. Hypocrisy is a good thing sometimes. Or would you prefer them all to be shutdown, too?

[Leria]

I agree with you that this is totally hypocritical.... or maybe, the RIAA/MPAA/IFPI know that were they to try and take on Google or MSN.... they would lose because they have enough money to buy just as many witnesses as those three organizations do.

[lkrupp]

Bit torrents are the home of thieves, pure and simple. You can argue all you want to about legitimate use and it all comes up as empty rhetoric. Bit torrents are used primarily for theft of copyrighted material, end of story.

[russkeller]

If you think about it, it's kinda like suing Microsoft or Intel because computers are used to Pirate their material. BitTorrent is just indexing what's out there. They're not doing any of the providing themselves, it amazing what ignorance can get in the US Justice System. Rank this next to 2 million for a cup of coffee at Mc Donalds.

[Leria]

Not 'end of story'. Bittorrent is being used for many LEGAL uses: distributing patches on some games, distributing fan-made subs of foreign television shows, etc.
Yes, SOME people use it to trade easily gotten things that are available for sale in the United States.... but not anywhere NEAR most or even 25% of them.

[DowNET]

@ W2Kuser

Totally agree! File sharing copyrighted material may be wrong but the way this was handled to prove that does not make sense. The war continues...

[DowNET]

@ Ikrupp

then google might be guilty to. They point at where these files are.

[unknown unknown]

It was really stupid for TorrentSpy to try modify potentially incriminating posts etc. It just asking for a default judgment.

@Ikrupp Considering the amount of traffic BitTorrent and P2P services generate and all the pirate content on video sites, you may as well just expand that to the internet.

[cube3]

selling advertising on stolen content streams and embeded flash apps.....

web2.o just bubbled tech guys...lol

[protagonistic]

Reply to ikrupp RE: "Bit torrents are the home of thieves, pure and simple. You can argue all you want to about legitimate use and it all comes up as empty rhetoric. Bit torrents are used primarily for theft of copyrighted material, end of story."

You obviously know nothing about this matter. I and many of the people I know use Bit Torrent clients frequently. And I have never used them for the purpose of downloading copyrighted material. And to the best of my knowledge none of the others I know using BT do either. There are many legitimate uses for bit torrent. Perhaps you could do a bit more research before making such sweeping claims next time.

[humanssssss]

I use Bit Torrent to download the latest Ubuntu. I remembered during the release of Ubuntu I was not able to download Ubuntu due to heavy traffic. Having this service gone is a disservice to the Internet community. MPAA comes after the little guys that can't defend them. Why not sue Google and YouTube. They are the ones that blantantly violate copyright. Under the DMCA, the copyright owners should prove that they own the copyright to the content and ask the site to take them down before legal action should be taken. There's also privacy issue involve too ... site owner may not know the content of the video until they inspect and also fair use. Clips of the movie can be shown so that it won't infringe on copyright. ... etc. etc.

[gumpman155]

as long as there is greed and people are hungry for money and power there will be no free society. Greed and money don't belive in a free society. This is how communism start when you have more have more have nots and less haves. That means the rich get richer and the poor gets poorer. Greed is greed dosen't matter if its about copyright or what its about its greed. For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul Matthew 16:26. So if you think that Hallywood is right and all of these other people are right to wine and fus about copyright then your just as bad as they are. if he shall gain the whole world, and lose his own soul? or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul Matthew 16:26.

[detamosa]

gumpman155, please stop. On behalf of myself and the rest of the people that are in favor of BitTorrent, please stop talking for us. When you write you come across as very ignorant. I'm sure if we heard you speak it would not sound this way but, I'm afraid your writing skills paint you in a very negative light intellectually. Sorry, but it's true.

[Leria]

Actually, I think he put the nail right on the head. All of this is about greed on the part of the MPAA and RIAA, who want you to buy things numerous times for numerous platforms, and keep paying again and again for them.
I'll be blunt: it is simply time to get rid of copyright, and go to a world where content owners are regulated by the federal government, allowed to charge ONCE for ANY AND ALL usages of a product, and if they don't like that...... Shut them down. Put them out of business, because we DO NOT NEED THEM.

[catfishrivers]

Sue the people who want your product...real smart...why can't these dinosaurs adapt their strategies to move with the times instead of staking claims in the dead mud of yesterday. They are nothing but a bunch of mobsters. People want free content, they want free music, free movies, and there are a million and one ways to make money providing the content for free. I watch Lost on abc.com every Friday night for free and watch a few ads in return. There are other models to follow. Wake up people, why are we standing for this? Speak Up!

[Rogerdon]

Wow, gumpman155 that is one delusional statement. Greed has nothing to do with it, copyrights are there to protect Movies and Music just like patents protect products. If someone loses his soul for protecting copyrighted product then what about the man who steals that content?

[me987654321]

GUESS WHAT? IF I GO TO GOOGLE AND TYPE IN ANY MOVIE NAME FOLLOWED BY TORRENT, THE RESULTS SHOW ME TONS OF PLACES TO GET THE MOVIE FROM. WILL THE MPAA SUE THEM ALSO?

[yourend]

first off i agree with grump. Look at how much people get paid to even be in the movie, even if they have only a few lines of speech. They well make their money when it hits the movie theaters and then some. I agree with pirating movies or anything for that matter. ONLY because everyone feels that they should make millions off their "idea" or product. Why not charge an honest amount? A DVD costs what, maybe a dollar or less, then you mass produce it and sell them for 5 bucks. Do you think there would be such a problem with all this copyrighting if you could buy the movie for 5 bucks. I think not. Also i download movies that i own so that i can have them on my computer without the need to copy it and convert it myself to divx, much simpler and faster. Do you think the movie industry would do this as a free service, hell no. And all this is about money, a million people download their movies or songs, its just that much more money they lost. But i say this, is it wrong to let one of your friends to borrow your movie, or listen to your cd? Once you have seen it or heard it, does it really matter if you bought it or not? One person bought it, shared it with their friends, you got to watch or listen to it for free. Is there going to be a share tax or some kind of law against that eventually? That's retarded and so is going ofter torrents. When will they realize they will never stop pirating. If you disagree with this, check out the movie called "steal this movie" or something liek that, pirating has been going on for centuries, it will never stop.

[fitzright]

torrent spy was only a search - they did not host a tracker or files. Go to google and type in as an example "the tudors torrent" and you get a list of where to download the show The Tudors. Exactly as you did with torrent spy. Torrent spy though was a small site so cannot pay a fine while google could easily pay. I download all tv shows I watch and never use the TV. Some shows like Meet the Press you no longer have to use torrents as you can get it right from the show's website as you can many shows. Torrent seem the best distribution method for large files. Eventually the studios will distribute this way. I mean why go to a store to rent a film when you can download it is 10 minutes. The studio could easily charge for this. In stead they try to fine a tiny site - there are 1000 more of those - they should just join them instead of fighting them. Youcan download all the music you want for free but Apple iTunes has found that you can also charge and people will pay - same is with movies and tv if only the studios made it available. Until they do people will get it for free.

[maheffe]

The real thief is the studios who rape our pocket books.

[tom Termini]

Oh please. Jeebus hates people making a living? Trying to improve their lives? Please keep your pseudo-religious rants on some other site, and stick to actual reasoned argument, facts, or, dare i say, technical discussions.

Sheesh.

[batwingedboy]

Awwww, poor movie studios! Real soon, old Rupert Murdoch is going to have to sell a few Rolexes just so he can afford to gas up his Learjet.

And all because of those dirty hackers, stealing that freely-copyable "property."

[Dalkorian]

The reason the MPAA went after TorrentSpy is simply because they're a small company with very limited funding - they couldn't afford to defend themselves against the army of lawyers the MPAA could afford. Google would be another story entirely, there is a chance they wouldn't prevail against a powerhouse like Google. So they pick on the little guys, trying to boost their bottom line because it's easier than working for a living.

[master_of_vanity]

why you asked gumpman155 to stop talking? no more free speech either? i'm afraid your writing skills paint you even worse...Sorry, but it's true.

i can see the greed in me cuz i also use torrent to d/l materials simply because i cant afford them, so it's greed and coveting...plain and simple! what's your story?