A $111 million fine for torrenting?
That’s what a judge in Los Angeles has ruled, according to Cnet. The company is Torrent Spy. The story said the company earned the judge’s enmity by allegedly destroying evidence:
According to the court, TorrentSpy operators had intentionally modified or deleted directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; concealed IP addresses of users; and withheld the names and addresses of forum moderators. The company had previously been fined $30,000 for violations of discovery orders and were warned of severe sanctions if they continued to ignore the orders.
The fine was based on a $30,000 fine for each of more than 3500 movies or TV shows torrented.
The company’s response:
TorrentSpy’s attorney, Ira Rothken, called that ruling “draconian in nature and unfair.” He said he did not believe any data was intentionally destroyed, and that some actions were taken to protect the privacy of TorrentSpy users.
Rothken also said at the time that TorrentSpy would appeal any decision on damages.
Such rulings are pointless; there are a dozen other torrent search sites coordinating the transfer of untold gigabytes of music and movies every hour, most of them based outside the U.S. The case is another petulant move by Big Content, in this case the MPAA, to take as many small fry down down with it as possible.
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I disagree somewhat, but not on the underlying merits of the case. Because of TorrentSpy’s abuse of the discovery process, it set up its own distorted loss; I have a suspicion that not a little bit of that ruling came because of the bad faith TorrentSpy continued to exhibit throughout the litigation.
However, is this a “victory” for the dying giants? Heck, no. As you’ve written about before, they’re furiously playing whack-a-mole instead of moving forward into the digital content world. How many years did it take for Hulu to pop up after YouTube? And–NBC to Zune, instead of the world’s most popular music/content store, iTunes? All the while fighting writers’ attempts to gain proceeds from these media?
The companies continue to make idiotic decisions based purely on an old-model idea of the “bottom line.”