MPAA Being Sued For Allegedly Hacking Torrentspy

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.'"

Comments

Wait wait wait

[MrSquirrel]

So the MPAA gets all "That's illegal!!!" when people commit grey-area "crimes" (i.e. filesharing), but they don't have a problem with full-blow black-area hacking? But... the MPAA are our friends, right? Why would they do something bad...

good point

[free space]

If "the law is with them" as they say, why did they resort to hacking and stealing information to obtain evidence instead of using the normal legal channels?

what about criminal charges?

[ohzero]

going after money in a lawsuit is one thing. crossing state lines while breaking into the computers of a corporation is criminal... is anyone going to something simple like call the FBI/ local law? jesus....

Re:But

[DougLorenz]

Because the truth is there are people who want this crap, just not at the price and/or with the conditions that the MPAA imposes.

That's really not your best possible argument here...

For example, I drive a pretty nice car, an Audi. If I was to sell it, it wouldn't be cheap. However, there are people out there that would like to drive an Audi, but do not want to pay the amount of money that they cost. Should I be required to sell my car to them for a lower price than I wish simply because other people don't want to pay the amount of money that I would be willing to sell at?

We aren't talking about air, water or food here... You don't need an MP3 to survive, so if the MPAA and the recording artists want to price their product out of the range where people are willing to buy, then it is up to them. Don't buy their product.

I agree that most people who just go and borrow a friend's CD and rip it to their iPod aren't trying to do damage to the recording artists. However, many of those recording artists have decided that it does damage them when someone uses P2P or other "sharing" software to distribute free copies of these artists work over the internet.

Seriously people, how many of you walk into a WalMart, grab a handful of stuff and just walk out the door? It isn't your property, and you shouldn't be acting with righteous indignation when the rightful property owner gets upset.