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Filed under: Internet, P2P

TorrentSpy hit with $111 million fine for copyright violation

TorrentSpy shuts down

BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy may have shut down last month, but that wasn't enough to prevent a federal judge from slapping the site with a $111 million fine yesterday. While BitTorrent didn't host any copyrighted materials on their own servers, the service did make it easy for users to illegally trade files. And the judge ruled that TorrentSpy's operators should pay $30,000 for each of the 3,699 instances of copyright infringement shown in the case.

Anyone familiar with sites like TorrentSpy knows that it's possible the site got off easy, as there were probably far more than 3699 copyrighted files made available through the site. On the other hand, TorrentSpy has already declared bankrupty and is incapable of paying the high fine. If the site hadn't already shut down, this ruling would most certainly have forced it to do so. A lawyer for TorrentSpy says the company plans to appeal.

This case was the first major test of the legality of BitTorrent sites in the US. Something tells us it won't be the last.

Filed under: Audio, Internet, Video

TorrentSpy BitTorrent tracker shuts down voluntarily

TorrentSpy shutdown
The same day a major internet service providers was busy making nice with BitTorrent traffic, one of the most popular BitTorrent tracking sites has decided to close up shop. TorrentSpy has been involved in a legal battle with the MPAA for the last few years, and while there's been no court order asking the site to shut down, the TorrentSpy team decided it would be easier to shut down the site than to follow the actual court order, which would have required TorrentSpy to track its users' private data.

Of course, there's nothing illegal about the BitTorrent protocol itself. It's simply a way to transfer files, and the Linux and open source communities have been using BitTorrent to distribute software for some time now. But there's no denying that a lot of what you'll find at popular BitTorrent trackers like TorrentSpy and The Pirate Bay is copyrighted material like music, movies, and TV shows being distributed without permission from the copyright holders.

But is the answer to ask BitTorrent trackers to spy on their users, or to provide alternate, legal methods for distributing your content? Perhaps if the studios did a better job of providing high quality ad-supported videos and music for download, piracy wouldn't be so prevalent. Or maybe we're just living in a dream world.

[via TorrentFreak]

Filed under: Internet, Web services, P2P

Another one bites the dust: Demonoid is dead

In what appears to be a continuing trend, popular BitTorrent site Demonoid, has shut down. Again. On November 9, 2007, the site went dark, displaying nothing more than a cryptic message that seems to say, "the fuzz turned up the heat on our landlord and we had to bail."

It's a sad, sad day for file sharers. Oh wait, that was October 23, when the really awesome site was shut down. Or the first time Demonoid was hit (a few years ago), or back in June, or when the servers went crazy, or when they killed Canadian access...

Not to minimize the pain, but we think many people expected this. The only mainstream public torrent site brazen enough to boastfully do its thing is The Pirate Bay. In the past six months alone, Demonoid, ISOHunt (and all the sites/trackers hosted by ISOHunt), OiNK, and Torrentspy have either shut-down or become crippled to the point of being unusable. This all comes nearly three-years after the first major torrent site, Suprnova.org, shut its doors in December 2004.

Perhaps a proper memorial is in order. We at DownloadSquad, call for November 10, 2007 to stand as the "BitTorrent Day of Mourning."

Dedicated to the brave thieves who risked their internet service so we could get poor quality screeners of Million Dollar Baby...

Thanks to everyone who sent this in.

Filed under: Internet

Pirate Bay, mininova, and Torrentspy among top Alexa sites

mininova, Torrentspy, and The Pirate Bay on Alexa
TorrentFreak is reporting that three top BitTorrent tracker sites--The Pirate Bay, mininova, and Torrentspy--have accomplished the inevitable and entered the Alexa 200, the top 200 most-trafficked sites on the web acccording to Alexa. Torrentspy has the highest rank at 153, followed by mininova at 165, and The Pirate Bay barely squeezing in at 198. While nobody argues that Alexa's rankings are the picture of accuracy, it does give a pretty good indication of web trends, and this seems like a pretty big trend. TorrentFreak speculates that it was IsoHunt's recent (temporary) shutdown that bumped these sites into the top 200 (with its spillover traffic going to them), and the Alexa chart would seem to confirm that. Now that IsoHunt is back up, I wonder if it will gain back that traffic, knocking the other sites down a notch.

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