Judge Asks TorrentSpy to Pay $110 Million to MPAA

One of the beneficiaries of the TorrentSpy shut down has been the Motion Picture Association of America. In a final ruling that ran into four pages, U.S. District Court Judge Florence-Marie Cooper on Wednesday ordered TorrentSpy to pay the MPAA $110 million for copyright infringement issues related to TV shows and films numbering in the thousands, approximately 3,700 in all.

Judge Cooper gave the judgment against Valence Media, the parent company of TorrentSpy, for ‘willfully inducing, contributing and vicariously allowing copyright infringement on its website.’ The judgment amounted finally to $30,000 for each infringement. Along with the fine, Cooper also issued a permanent injunction against TorrentSpy.

Cooper had also earlier in December last year issued a default judgment against the TorrentSpy principals, charging the owners of the BitTorrent peer-to-peer search site with destroying evidence related to the lawsuit the MPAA had filed against them.

Earlier in May 2007, TorrentSpy had received orders from another judge to keep a record of important information related to the MPAA lawsuit, such as its server logs and IP addresses. Cooper had charged them with disregarding that previous order.

In February 2006, the MPAA had filed a lawsuit against TorrentSpy, claiming the torrent files on the company’s website were uploaded illegally and were therefore in violation of copyright issues. The MPAA is the official representative of the movie studios of Hollywood.

As the case meandered along, things did not seem too bright for TorrentSpy, and the site finally shut down its operations on March 24 this year. Talking about the judgment, Dan Glickman, the chairman and CEO of MPAA, said, “This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites. The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios.”

Elaborating further, Glickman said, “The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

Ira Rothken, the lawyer for TorrentSpy, said that his next move would be to appeal the decision by Judge Cooper. Speaking to CNet, he said, “What is really going on here is a Hollywood public-relations stunt. The reason for the size of the judgment was so a bunch of news organizations would write that ‘a $100 million judgment was issued against a bunch of pirates’ when, in fact, it was declared against a company with no appreciable assets that has already declared bankruptcy.”

A CNet report added that Rothken also said, “…the case has no precedent-setting value because TorrentSpy never got its day in court.” This may come as good news to IsoHunt, one of TorrentSpy’s former competitors, which is another company facing an MPAA lawsuit for copyright infringement.

While the judgment may have brought some cheer to MPAA members, it is still not clear whether it will be able to collect the $110 million that TorrentSpy now officially owes it. According to the court records, Justin Bunnell and Wes Parker, the principals of Valence and TorrentSpy, have filed for bankruptcy.