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MPAA Being Sued For Allegedly Hacking Torrentspy

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the shoe-is-on-the-other-camel's-foot dept.

goldaryn writes "Valence Media, the parent company of Torrentspy.com, one of the web's largest torrent search engines, has filed a lawsuit against the MPAA for allegedly hiring a hacker to steal e-mail correspondence and trade secrets. From the suit: 'The Motion Picture Association of America willfully and intentionally obtained without authority, conspired to obtain without authority, purchased, procured, used and disclosed private information that it knew was unlawfully obtained through unauthorized access to Plaintiffs' computer servers and private email accounts, in violation of United States and California privacy and computer security laws.'"

2 of 448 comments (clear)

  1. Re:My issue with this... by John+Hasler · · Score: 4, Informative

    > If you have a legal conviction it would make the civil suit seem solid.
    > A civil suit on it's own seems weak.

    You've got it backwards. A criminal conviction requires proof beyond a reasonable doubt. Winning a civil suit requires preponderance of evidence. OJ Simpson was found not guilty but nevertheless lost a subsequent wrongful death suit.

    Besides, there's no money in filing a criminal complaint.

    --
    Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
  2. Re:Hoisted By Their Own Petard! by number11 · · Score: 5, Informative

    didn't Senator Hatch try to push through some legislation a couple years ago that would make this perfectly legal for copyright holders? That's about the time he made the statement about if being OK if the RIAA/MPAA "blew up their computers"

    Yes. And about a week later, Senator Hatch got caught running pirated software on his government website.

    We didn't hear much from him about blowing up computers after that.