TorrentSpy cuts service to US following action by MPAA
By John Pospisil
TorrentSpy is no longer available to the US following action by the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), which is demanding that the site hands over user information.
Billing itself as the largest BitTorrent search engine, TorrentSpy is said to index about 10,000 new torrents each day.
Last year the MPAA filed a copyright suit against TorrentSpy. In May this year a federal magistrate judge ordered that TorrentSpy hand over user information held in its server’s random access memory (RAM) to the MPAA.
When US-based visitors now try to visit TorrentSpy they are the directed to the following message:
Sorry, but because you are located in the USA you cannot use the search features of the Torrentspy.com website. Torrentspy’s decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court but rather an uncertain legal climate in the US regarding user privacy and an apparent tension between US and European Union privacy laws.
It appears that the redirect is an attempt by the site owner to avoid having to hand over user information to the MPAA.
“We must comply with European Union privacy laws and turning off USA traffic was the only way to guarantee that protection for our users,” site owner Justin Bunnell told TorrentFreak. “It is not something with a time limit.”
Currently Torrent Spy does not log any personal information; IP addresses are stored in random access memory (RAM) for less than a second. The MPAA is demanding that TorrentSpy keeps server logs, capturing IP addresses and details of which BitTorrents were downloaded.
The MPAA is waging an ongoing war against pirates, having recently been caught setting up ‘dummy’ websites in an attempt to catch those who download copyrighted videos.
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