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TorrentSpy Hurts Themselves, No One Else

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finish lineThe tech and legal headlines today read like an exercise in perspective for a writing class: “TorentSpy Loses Case” “MPAA Wins Case” “TorrentSpy loses Lawsuit” “MPAA gets Win”

There seems to be pretty much an equal division of how the ruling is described.

That may be more to do with what the ruling is actually about rather than the biases of the reporting articles.

Brief recap: MPAA sued TorrentSpy for copyright infringement, alleging that they basically aided and abetted and the pirating of movies. The most interesting issue in the case was likely to be whether a search engine, through which users could locate pirated copyrighted material, was responsible for copyright infringement even if the search engine did not host the materials.

However, in an uncommon move, the court has ruled that the lawsuit is over and that the MPAA wins. But the win has nothing to do with the copyright issues, and the trial never started. The problem here was the conduct of TorrentSpy during the pre-trial discovery phase of the lawsuit. During discovery, each side of a lawsuit is required by law to preserve potentially relevant material and to turn it over to the other side if they are asked for it. Those are the rules all companies and individuals have to play by when the courts are involved (and sometimes even before then).

TorrentSpy, the court determined, had changed, destroyed, or hidden material that they were required to preserve. The MPAA argued that TorrentSpy had altered or destroyed so much evidence that it had become impossible to ever have a fair trial. The court agreed, and issued the ruling.

So the bottom line is that TorrentSpy has lost, but the loss has no bearing on any legal issue related to copyright.

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