TorrentSpy Tosses in the Towel

Legal Fees were mounting in their battle against the Motion Pictures Association of America, and rather than spend another dime in legal fees, they shut down.

From the Reg here:

The operators of TorrentSpy, once the most popular BitTorrent tracker, have been forced to permanently shutter the site after losing a battle with rights holders.

A Los Angeles court ruled in favour of the Motion Picture Ass. of America in December after TorrentSpy destroyed evidence, claiming it was protecting users’ privacy. The judge said it had made a fair trial impossible and imposed a $30,000 fine.

This statement has been posted the TorrentSpy site by its founder Justin Bunnell:

We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.

The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.

Ultimately the court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and international law; therefore, we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for our users – permanent shutdown.

It was a wild ride,
The TorrentSpy Team

Score one for the copyright holders.