str82u Posted May 25, 2006 Share Posted May 25, 2006 This is a story I got in an email from SecurityProNews Today The Motion Picture Association of America has been sued by Valence Media, parent company of the TorrentSpy search engine, over its employment of a person to steal private information from them. Attorneys for TorrentSpy said in the suit the MPAA paid $15,000 to an unnamed "informant" who entered their computer systems without authorization to collect information on TorrentSpy for his employer. The action filed in US District Court for the Central District of California said an intermediary for the MPAA told the informant, "We don't care how you get it," and promised him indemnity from liability for his actions. Those actions included obtaining an Excel spreadsheet listing TorrentSpy expenses for January through June 2005; private emails of company employees and executives; details about TorrentSpy's servers and networking; and client bills and other trade secrets. The lawsuit also alleges an agent of the MPAA told the informant private investigators would be employed to "comb through the trash" of TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell and other people associated with the company. This dispute is an offshoot of the MPAA's battle with sites like TorrentSpy, which indexes torrent files. Those torrent files act as pointers to content stored on other machines. The MPAA sees no difference between providing copyrighted content for download and pointing to where end users can find it. That led the MPAA to sue TorrentSpy and other torrent search engines in February 2006. MPAA categorized TorrentSpy as "the world's most-visited site for obtaining infringing content using Torrent software. The site offers over 160,000 content items including 27,182 movies, 21,130 TV shows and over 45,000 music items" at that time. About the Author: David Utter is a business and technology writer with WebProNews. You can find the story on their site By Clicking Here. Looks to me like the MPAA are trying to get evidence because they have no case or a weak case on this one, if they don't win this one you know folks are gonna go HOG WILD BABY! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Tenebrae Posted May 25, 2006 Share Posted May 25, 2006 As I've said before, the MPAA and RIAA aren't going to play by the rules. They are not companies, they are essentially entities acting on behalf of corporation and hence have a great deal of money and very little responsibility. These are essentially people paid to forward the aims of their sponsors... legality isn't their concern. Ultimately, the MPAA losing means nothing. The people funding it create MPAB, who do the same things. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TetsuoShima Posted May 26, 2006 Share Posted May 26, 2006 Well, to me at least, it's clear that a 'search engine' or 'indexing site' cannot be held responsible for what it finds/indexes, if it is available on the web. If they were, google/yahoo/MSN/... and basically any other search tool out there can just close its business, since they'd all be 'criminal organisations'. By the way they conduct business and how they are organised, it is my opinion that those 'associations' are every bit as criminal in their conduct as the ones they are trying to bring down. But hey, I'm no judge, luckily for them... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
str82u Posted May 26, 2006 Author Share Posted May 26, 2006 Well' date=' to me at least, it's clear that a 'search engine' or 'indexing site' cannot be held responsible for what it finds/indexes, if it is available on the web. If they were, google/yahoo/MSN/... and basically any other search tool out there can just close its business, since they'd all be 'criminal organisations'. By the way they conduct business and how they are organised, it is my opinion that those 'associations' are every bit as criminal in their conduct as the ones they are trying to bring down. But hey, I'm no judge, luckily for them...[/quote'] Kinda like being a classified ad for piracy, eh? Wonder if that's like the newspaper advertising stolen goods? Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steveo Posted May 26, 2006 Share Posted May 26, 2006 I, personally, don't see the difference between indexing and active listing. One has to keep in mind that one does not have to consent to be an accessory (one may have to be a consenting party to be guilty of a crime, however), and as such, it is left to determine to what extent indexing sites are consenting parties to the dissemination of illegal materials. Secondarily, or in fact if one is being true to the topic, primarily, the actions of the MPAA in this case are mildly deplorable, and indeed to some extent, criminal. I'm going to jump in and get this out of the way though, I don't believe this undermines the case of the MPAA against these sites. A criminal activity by one party doesn't, in my mind, remove the justification for their legal action due to the unrelated nature of the crimes. It's not as if the MPAA are out there distributing copyright material, which would make them hypocrites and undermine their position. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TetsuoShima Posted May 26, 2006 Share Posted May 26, 2006 Well' date=' to me at least, it's clear that a 'search engine' or 'indexing site' cannot be held responsible for what it finds/indexes, if it is available on the web. If they were, google/yahoo/MSN/... and basically any other search tool out there can just close its business, since they'd all be 'criminal organisations'. By the way they conduct business and how they are organised, it is my opinion that those 'associations' are every bit as criminal in their conduct as the ones they are trying to bring down. But hey, I'm no judge, luckily for them...[/quote'] Kinda like being a classified ad for piracy, eh? Wonder if that's like the newspaper advertising stolen goods? Well, as long as the newspaper doesn't know that it is, then I don't see the problem, you cannot expect a search site to verify all results they come up with... Neither can you expect a newspaper to check wether all adds are genuine. afaik, those running that particular site have testified that each and every time they were notified of having links on their site that were requested to be removed because of 'unclear origins' or whatever it is called, they removed it. The same as one would expect from the newspaper... A criminal activity by one party doesn't' date=' in my mind, remove the justification for their legal action due to the unrelated nature of the crimes.[/quote'] You are absolutely right! It's not as if the MPAA are out there distributing copyright material' date=' which would make them hypocrites and undermine their position.[/quote'] Well, actually they have done exactly that. It was a news item some time ago. I believe there is even a topic about it in this section somewhere, don't know exactly how it turned out in the end though... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steveo Posted May 26, 2006 Share Posted May 26, 2006 Oh, fair enough. Corrected I do indeed stand. I just wanted to get in there before the rabid haters of the MPAA started foaming at the mouth and ranting away. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TetsuoShima Posted May 26, 2006 Share Posted May 26, 2006 Oh, hadn't notice this, but appearently NiteShdw made a Blog entry about this before this topic was created. I suggest all further coments be placed there. :) NiteShdw's Blog Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Amnot Borg Posted May 26, 2006 Share Posted May 26, 2006 Ha, I was just about to mention his topic was up first. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
katerina Posted May 27, 2006 Share Posted May 27, 2006 This is a story I got in an email from SecurityProNews Today The Motion Picture Association of America has been sued by Valence Media, parent company of the TorrentSpy search engine, over its employment of a person to steal private information from them. Attorneys for TorrentSpy said in the suit the MPAA paid $15,000 to an unnamed "informant" who entered their computer systems without authorization to collect information on TorrentSpy for his employer. The action filed in US District Court for the Central District of California said an intermediary for the MPAA told the informant, "We don't care how you get it," and promised him indemnity from liability for his actions. Those actions included obtaining an Excel spreadsheet listing TorrentSpy expenses for January through June 2005; private emails of company employees and executives; details about TorrentSpy's servers and networking; and client bills and other trade secrets. The lawsuit also alleges an agent of the MPAA told the informant private investigators would be employed to "comb through the trash" of TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell and other people associated with the company. This dispute is an offshoot of the MPAA's battle with sites like TorrentSpy, which indexes torrent files. Those torrent files act as pointers to content stored on other machines. The MPAA sees no difference between providing copyrighted content for download and pointing to where end users can find it. That led the MPAA to sue TorrentSpy and other torrent search engines in February 2006. MPAA categorized TorrentSpy as "the world's most-visited site for obtaining infringing content using Torrent software. The site offers over 160,000 content items including 27,182 movies, 21,130 TV shows and over 45,000 music items" at that time. About the Author: David Utter is a business and technology writer with WebProNews. You can find the story on their site By Clicking Here. Looks to me like the MPAA are trying to get evidence because they have no case or a weak case on this one, if they don't win this one you know folks are gonna go HOG WILD BABY! hmmm mpaa now involved in corporate espionage? Doesnt surprise me in the least this is common practice in the business world. Now goodluck torrentspy trying to prove it also your allowed to go through the trash provided it's in a common area ie. a dumpster. If they escavated the trash inside torrentspy that is a violation! The thing is you need to prove this happened. Therefore unless Torrentspy has hard evidence there not going to win this suit. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fenriswolf Posted May 27, 2006 Share Posted May 27, 2006 Oh, hadn't notice this, but appearently NiteShdw made a Blog entry about this before this topic was created. I suggest all further coments be placed there. :) NiteShdw's Blog As TetsuoShima suggested, place further comments here. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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