TorrentSpy Finds Out How Much Free Movies Cost
The MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) has won a default judgment against Valence Media's download site Torrentspy. The judgment is handy for figuring out exactly how much all those free movies everyone's downloading are worth. According to a federal judge, $110 million dollars ought to about cover it.
In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.
In a response to this decision - and to ensure the privacy of their users - TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic and revenue.
There's a good bit of whining in the comments that the judge doesn't understand how torrents work, so she is obviously incapable of rendering a decision about them. I think the problem actually is that downloaders doesn't know how judges work, not the other way around. You're not "ensuring the privacy of your users" by erasing their accounts after a judge tells you hand over their information. You're destroying evidence. All in all, perhaps it would have been cheaper for Torrentspy to simply give away Netflix memberships.
In 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.
In a response to this decision - and to ensure the privacy of their users - TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic and revenue.
There's a good bit of whining in the comments that the judge doesn't understand how torrents work, so she is obviously incapable of rendering a decision about them. I think the problem actually is that downloaders doesn't know how judges work, not the other way around. You're not "ensuring the privacy of your users" by erasing their accounts after a judge tells you hand over their information. You're destroying evidence. All in all, perhaps it would have been cheaper for Torrentspy to simply give away Netflix memberships.
Comments
i got to disagree. websites (i belive) dont have the right to keep private data unless you let them. so when you send error reports, or anything of that matter to a website they cant keep it so torrentspy didnt destroy evidence, in fact in your statement you said the judge ordered torrent spy to track data and hand it over, not hand over existing data. also, torrent spy was looking out for the end users because in fact it protected their privacy since they would of been taking down ip's and everything from u.s. users which i wouldnt want any company to take down my private data. at all. not microsoft, not the irs, no company should have my private data unless i let them. on a side note, the downloading of torrents is legal. uploading is illegal. (its a fact) but im curuois what if you upload half a movie? then what do you get fined? or fined half? or not fined? |
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