RSSTorrentSpy Ordered to Hand Over User Data
By Ed Oswald | Published August 28, 2007, 5:06 PM
It looks like TorrentSpy's decision to ban US users from its site may have been done in response to a court order anyway.
Although it ceased operating in the US officially on Sunday, a court order was issued the next day which required it to hand over information on the activities of its US users.
TorrentSpy had appealed a June decision ruling that it had to hand over user information found in the RAM of its servers. It argued that RAM was temporary storage and that it would be difficult to glean any information pertinent to the case.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper denied the claim on Monday, saying that even if it is temporary, the company will still be required to hand over any stored information found there.
Representatives for TorrentSpy are using its Sunday decision as cover to say that they won't have anything to surrender to the court. It also said it will re-appeal the decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.
TorrentSpy had claimed that the original move to end US operations "was not compelled by any Court," but with the timing of its action and Monday's court rulings, that response could be considered questionable. The MPAA, which has been leading the charge against the site had no public comment as of press time.
My only question is, why do they have to even abide by a US court order. If the MPAA or RIAA wants the log data they should have to file the request in the country that Torrentspy keeps their tracker servers. From what I understand and I could be wrong that in the Netherlands it is impossible to force providers of a service to hand over logs unless the particaular crime the investigators are looking for carries a min sentence of 2 years.
Score: 0
|I say Yank the physical RAM chips out of the servers, ship them the cheapest method they can find to the MPAA lawyers, and replace all the RAM chips in the servers :)
BTW, how WAS "RAM" defined?
Score: 0
|I wonder if they know about Piratebay lol
anyway its a sad day when something like "Hand over the contents of your ram" is actualy considered sane... I used to think that people where not stupid just ignorant, things like this make me reconsider that thought. I guess some one should have explained to her that the contents of that RAM change something like 400 million times a second ? (total guess there since I do not know the speed of the RAM)
Score: 0
|How can anyone be upset about this. Download files that you have not purchased from a torrent is not legal.
Clearly the people behind TorrentSpy have no problem telling big huge lies to everyone in their so called community.
I have no doubt they will screw ever single user that used them. This is way torrent sites are a horrible way to get illegal files.
Anything you don't own is stealing...Any country that doesn't have a law saying at least that much clearly is not a country worth speaking of.
Score: 0
|Pirates that lie ??? OMG say it aint so !!! lol
I guess they have not heard of the pirates code... more guidelines then rules...
Score: 0
|wow, you sound like one of their lawyers. You goodies types get on my nerves. If youre so sensitive go buy a puppy
Score: 0
|maybe they should have demanded parley
Score: 0
|Downloading files from a torrent is legal if the material is open source, public domain, or the copyright owners allow it. I would also add freeware, demos, and shareware.
With your logic, one could not download Linux releases off a torrent without purchasing the distro, even if the distro was free.
Don't Valve and WoW use torrent software to download patches? Should we have to purchase patches in addition to the games?
Score: 0
|Oh, oh, can I take part if the MPAA is paying the bills?
#tail -f /dev/mem > /mnt/incrediblymassivelogdrives/log.txt
Score: 0
|The judge is a real noobie.
Score: 0
|not nesesserely. he is paid and does what he told.
Score: 0
|just hand over all the physical ram and get replacements... let them figure out on their own what they asked for is useless.
Score: 0
|That was my thought also. If they're that ignorant, they're in the wrong field. And maybe that judge should be barred from dealing with tech cases.
Score: 0
|Get ready for a whole new wave of lawsuits against people who make $25,000 a year.
Score: 0
|Big corporations: suing poor people until they are dirt poor.
Man, I love my country.
Score: 0
|It's the (new?) American "greed is good" way of doing business.
Score: 0
|Take a snapshot every hour and hand it over in binary. Impractical to print it, you could put it on DVD for them.
Score: 0
|How about no.
Score: 0
|