MPAA is Awarded $110 Million In TorrentSpy Case

An anonymous reader writes "The MPAA was awarded a staggering judgment in its case against the BitTorrent indexing site TorrentSpy. According to Slyck.com, a judge in California rendered a $110 million victory for the MPAA, and a permanent injunction against TorrentSpy."

nice while it lasted

If only there were other sites to use. Oh well, BitTorrent was good while it lasted.

LOL

What're they going to do? Confiscate their pencils and sell them on eBay for 5 cents?

I'm sure the defendants have no where near $110 million, and if they have to keep paying it out of income they receive in the future, what's the point of even working?

Might as well squat an abandoned building in New Orleans instead. Move to some remote wilderness area and live off the land. Sounds like much better options than paying that kind of debt down.

Re:LOL

And the $110,000,000 is just for infringements on movies belonging to 5 MPAA members.

Wait until the lawsuits roll in from every other movie studio, tv producer, music studio and porn maker that they held torrents for. They're going to end up owing more than the GDP of the world as a whole.

Re:LOL

They didn't host them; they indexed other sites that did.

Perspective

To put this is some perspective, the US has offered Burma (Myanmar) $3m in aid.

Re:Perspective

TFA mentions that the MPAA was awarded $30,000 per infringement. So following your lead the US thinks the people of Burma are worth $30 per person (assuming the 100,000 figure is somewhat accurate.)

Re:Perspective

the US has offered Burma (Myanmar) $3m in aid.

To put that into perspective, that is about 24 minutes worth of war in Iraq.

Re:Perspective

$3m to Burma will feed everyone and build them all new houses.

$110m to the RIAA/MPAA is caviar lunch on thursday.

Re:Perspective

The era of perpetual copyright was brought on by a few individuals that refused to invent and create any longer, and instead sought to make money indefinitely off the nostalgic value of their works.

I'm looking at you, Disney.

And to you, c6gunner, I'm not saying that copyright shouldn't exist, but perhaps... the original 14 year timeframe was adequate. The film, Iron Man, made $100,000,000 in three days of sales, in 14, 50, or well over one hundred years can Hollywood justify why it needs to retain the sole distribution rights to something that was envisioned by someone who has already died? (Referring to the 100+ year copyright terms most countries have these days.)

*shrug*

they've spent a fortune on litigation, to obtain a judgement they can't collect on & a worthless injunction, against a site that was never any good in the first place and shut down a few month ago anyway.

More fool them.

Re:*shrug*

It only shut down when the legal threats began. Meanwhile how many new torrent trackers have popped up? This is the definition of "hollow victory."

Re:*shrug*

No not fool, because now they have a judgement on record that is stupidly broad in the favour in defining 'infringement'.

They've made INDEXING files illegal, please note they got nailed despite setting up services that let copyright holders take down stuff they owned.

The Legal team over at google is looking at this and going 'oh fuck no'.

Re:*shrug*

they've spent a fortune on litigation, to obtain a judgement they can't collect on & a worthless injunction, against a site that was never any good in the first place and shut down a few month ago anyway.

More fool them.

They never expected to collect any money. This was all about sending a message to other Torrent sites and P2P networks. "We've got legal precedent and unlimited resources. We're coming after you."

How is this even possible!!?!?!?!!!

For the love of GOD and all that is mighty how the heck is this even possible?!?!?!! Are we electing complete idiots to the courts these days?!?! Oh, wait, don't answer that one.

Torrentspy contained ZERO copyright material...ZERO, NIL, NADA, NOTHING. It contained no songs, no movies, no books, no videos, no nothing. It simply provided a search functionality that I could do on google (money grubbing bastards) today: searchword filetype:torrent

Why isn't google or microsoft or yahoo or any other site stopped from doing this...geezus krist, the Music And Film Industry Association of America (MAFIAA) can go MAFUCKthemselves.

Re:How is this even possible!!?!?!?!!!

Exactly, Google index Pirate Bay results. Is the MAFIAA going to sue Google?

Seems like a fair judgement

Dr. Evil: Shit. Oh hell, let's just do what we always do. Hijack some nuclear weapons and hold the world hostage. Yeah? Good! Gentlemen, it has come to my attention that a breakaway Russian Republic called Kreplachistan will be transferring a nuclear warhead to the United Nations in a few days. Here's the plan. We get the warhead and we hold the world ransom for... ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

Number Two: Don't you think we should ask for *more* than a million dollars? A million dollars isn't exactly a lot of money these days. Virtucon alone makes over 9 billion dollars a year! Dr. Evil: Really? That's a lot of money.

[pause]

Dr. Evil: Okay then, we hold the world ransom for...

Dr. Evil: One... Hundred... BILLION DOLLARS!

And people wonder...

Why the USA is looked at as total idiots. Betting the entire economy on imaginary property that can be easily copied for $0 while gutting our factories and even outsourcing our jobs at home through H1-B visas. Hmmm-I wonder where the flaw in THAT plan is? The simple fact is just as the automobile has forced those in the horse buggy business to adapt or die so will ever more powerful broadband and MP3 players force software and music companies to change or die. Instead of seeing that change is a part of progress and looking for ways to make capital on this new business model the *.AA along with their lackeys in congress will try to put the genie back in the bottle with ever more draconian laws.

Meanwhile the rest of the world will adapt while we sink further and further into a third world fascist state. While I really hope that we'll see the writing on the wall and our leaders will realize granting themselves and their big business buddies ever more increasing powers over our lives is a dead end road, after watching this march as it continues its dance of failure for the past 20+ years I sincerely doubt we're in for anything other than more of the same: More of the same bad leadership, more of the same bad laws,and more of the same police state crap to protect us "from terrorists and those evil child predators" which is of course a smokescreen for more business and government control over our lives. But that is my 02c,YMMV

Re:someone forgot to tell the immigrants

Actually, I know some of those whom you are speaking of. They live 6 to an apartment down the haul from me. Nice bunch of guys. When I asked them why they were living 6 to an apartment when they were making good money,they said "We're just going to stay here a few years and spend as little as we can while we sock our money away. Then we'll go back to Mexico and live like kings!",which is of course one of the problems we have right now. All our money is being sucked out like a black hole away from this country and without any tangible goods to sell it won't be coming back.

And as for the software programmer who posted earlier? Just because you write a program doesn't mean you should get paid for 100+ years(or whatever the copyright is right now). There are plenty of ways to make money WITHOUT needing the government to support your business model with ever more draconian and intrusive laws. You can do work for hire,you can be paid to add features or do maintenance and support,etc. There are ways to make money out of the new business economy-it just takes work and smarts. But too many businesses with really big checkbooks would rather buy our laws rather than have to actually compete and innovate. Which is why IMHO we'll end up another third world fascist state while the rest of the world passes us by. But that is my 02c,YMMV

Finally!

Those poor crew members will get reimbursed for the piracy that has hurt them and their families dearly. You know, the ones in the clips the theaters used to show before previews came on, where some older black guy was claiming how piracy hurts him and his family and every one involved in making a movie. It's quite possible they still show that clip but I wouldn't know since I stopped going to the theater last year because I was tired of the ridiculous ticket prices and lack of original movies the past few years.

I'm guessing that...

The judge in this case, obviously, didn't have time to read this:

http://recordingindustryvspeople.blogspot.com/2008/02/default-judgment-denied-in-atlantic-v.html [blogspot.com]

Chances of the judgement being overturned on appeal: 100%.

Re:No crime, but still punished.

For example, I can go buy books with instructions on producing illegal substances, bombs, and weapons.

Delta Press [deltapress.com]? Paladin Press [paladin-press.com]?

The days of Ragnar Benson [wikipedia.org] have almost faded away into memory.

The companies that used to publish "action books" have almost completely abandoned that genre.

Does that make borders a criminal?

You don't have to make something a "crime" to get rid of it. Read up on the Paladin Press / Hit Man incident [wikipedia.org].

Can you imagine the firestorm if a company started publishing Paladin Press-style books today? In our post-9/11 world? Ha!

Re:No crime, but still punished.

So if you ask me where to buy a gun, I say "go to walmart". You go to walmart buy it, then kill someone.... That means I coordinated the murder?

Re:What is the method of determining damages?

The only way to semi-accurately calculate their losses is to look at their declining profits year to year, which I would consider a real value partially accountable to piracy.

But... Their profits have been rising... Year over year, their blockbusters are increasingly more profitable. And its the blockbusters that get pirated the most. So by your logic (and most sane peoples logic), piracy is actually helping their sales. What's killing their profits is the movies they produce that aren't any good.

Re:Future News, MPAA raids isoHunt

That'd not be a good idea on their part. isoHunt is hosted in Toronto right now, and Gary's a Canadian citizen that'd battle it out in a Canadian court(possibly while relocating to another country). We also comply with DMCA takedown notices(even though we don't have to) - assuming they follow our copyright policy [isohunt.com] - and current legal proceedings in California aren't going as planned for them. [isohunt.com]

They proved a point or two.

You can't do business in the US because there is no free press there. It's the Napster case all over again and the courts have learned nothing in the last decade. Their lust to protect what they perceive as a big US business interest has them reaching these absurd rulings for tenuous secondary encouragement of copyright infringement. The fact that it's impossible for anyone to tell who "owns" a digital file is reason to rethink copyright not destroy people's ability to share things they have every right to share. Decisions like this will leave the US a broadcast backwater in a world that's bursting with free culture.