TorrentSpy has been ordered to pay $110m the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) for failing to hand over logs on the activity of users of their website.
The landmark ruling will send shockwaves to the thousands of small torrent search websites and maybe even some of the larger ones that offer a similar service to the one TorrentSpy offered before it shutdown in March of this year.
TorrentSpy in effect, was nothing more than a torrent search engine. It never held or stored any copyrighted material on it’s server. However, it did allow users easily find copyrighted material.
So in effect, TorrentSpy has been sued because it “linked” to copyrighted material, something that Google, Yahoo! and MSN do all the time with their search engine.
A simple search on Google will give you “links” to millions of copyrighted material. Here’s a very simple example of this http://www.google.ie/search?q=intitle%3a%22index+of%22+eminem
Why don’t the MPAA doing anything about this? Is the muscle behind the larger corporates a bridge to far for them to fight in their war against copyright infringement??
#1 by Budge at April 17th, 2009
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I don’t think Google is doing the same thing (as discussed on twitter
). Google are linking to sites like torrentspy. They are one step back in the chain. I don’t agree with any of it but unless we want censored internet like in China then Google of course will show these sites because they exist.
#2 by Tom Doyle at April 17th, 2009
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Hi Budge,
TorrentSpy didn’t host the files, they searched other torrent sites and gave links to the torrents. Google does this too.
Tom