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Court Rules Against TorrentSpy In MPAA Email Suit
mikesd81 writes "C|Net reports that a lawsuit filed by TorrentSpy against the MPAA, accusing it of intercepting the company's private e-mails, was tossed out of court this week. Even though a U.S District judge ruled that the MPAA broke no rules, the MPAA does admit it paid $15,000 to obtain private e-mails belonging to TorrentSpy executives. The MPAA's acknowledgment is significant because it comes at a time when the group is trying to limit illegal file sharing by imploring movie fans to act ethically and resist the temptation to download pirated movies. From the article: 'Ethically, it's pretty clear that reading other people's e-mail is wrong,' said Lorrie Cranor, an associate research professor and Internet privacy expert at Carnegie Mellon University. 'Being offered someone else's e-mails by a third party should have been a red flag.' TorrentSpy is appealing the decision." This is just not a good week for those guys.
"imploring movie fans to act ethically and resist the temptation to download pirated movies"
How about -
imploring the MPAA to act ethically and resist the temptation to download pirated emails.
It could be worse, it could be Monday.
Don't want someone to know something? Don't write it in an e-mail. Any server set to do so can log anything you send through it, along with any of the hops. Ethical to purchase e-mails? Hell no, a good tactic to find out what the other side is doing? Definitely. That said the MPAA is an outdated business model and should DIAF.
So paying a third party to steal insider information and possible trade secrets isn't illegal? Can someone explain that one to me? Didn't someone just go to jail for trying to sell Coke insider info to Pepsi?
TorrentSpy is unfortunately in the wrong on this one. You can decry activist judges and hate on the MPAA and its brethren, but if you study the issues at play in this case and others like it, one thing is clear: illegal bittorrent aggregators need to be shut down. They are simply facilitating illegal trading of copyrighted works. Don't like the law? Change it. But the fact is, as the law exists today, TorrentSpy and others like it have no place, no legal place, in the United States.
So, according to US law, it's illegal to hack into someone's computer to read their private data but it's legal to pay someone else to do it?
.torrent files that are not themselves infringing is being called into question?
Yet the legality of hosting a site hosting
This seems very inconsistent to me. Is it or is it not legal to act as a proxy to potentially illegal material?
but some are more equal than others.
While we (the citizens) weren't paying attention, "they" have put in a two-tiered structure where the laws apply to the sheep, but not the wolves. That's why if you steal someone's SSN, you go to jail, but if you are an illegal alien, hey, it's ok. Or if the MPAA or RIAA breaks the law, harrasses and intimidates people, it's ok...they are a legimiate business interest (and we know this because of their campaign contributions). If Tyson wants to import a whole town from Guatamala to work in their chicken processing plant in Arkansas, that's ok too. "Steal" a DVD by copying it, and it's pokey time for you. All the while your Congressmen and Congresswoman are busy putting their hands in your wallets to pay for boondoggles like the $140 billion ($450,000 for every pre-Katrina man, woman, and child) for New Orleans relief, and various other Bridges to Nowhere.
Corpprate Mole/Corporate espionage agent.
Now you don't even have to hide, since apparently what you are doing is legal now. wtf?
---- Booth was a patriot ----
It's illegal to buy any good that is obtained through illegal means. I can't believe that at a minimum, the MPAA executives didn't violate a state law. Maybe TorrentSpy needs to contact a local attorney and see what options they have under state law. I find it very hard to believe that agreeing to pay for data gained through hacking is legal in any state in the United States.
Is it legal to intercept and sell emails? if not, then wouldn't it be illegal to purchase said emails? The way the ex-employee got a hold of the emails sounded really fishy to me, as in, it sounded illegal. Isn't it illegal to purchase knowingly stolen items? Due to the very fact that the emails were obviously not addressed to them, wouldn't it be obvious to the MPAA that the emails were stolen and therefore would either A) need to go about verifying they're legit before acquiring them or B) turn them down due to knowing that they were obtained illegally.
i'm not a lawyer, so i'm probably missing something... either that, or i've lost that much more faith in the justice system.
you pay off the right judges, erm, make campaign contributions to elected judges...
since when "i have paid tens of thousands of dollars to acquire something that is private to someone/company by all laws" is not illegal ? or did judge get paid too ?
Read radical news here
How the HELL is this not a felony?!
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
By using them as the foundation for a lawsuit the MPAA violated the copyrights related to those emails. So torrentspy should countersue for the value attached to the infringement, the cost of the settlement from the lawsuit plus torrentspy's lawyer costs.
Court rules against TorrentSpy in hacking case
y +in+hacking+case/2100-1030_3-6204948.html
By Greg Sandoval
http://news.com.com/Court+rules+against+TorrentSp
Story last modified Tue Aug 28 16:32:05 PDT 2007
A correction was made to this story. Read below for details.
A lawsuit filed last year by TorrentSpy--a BitTorrent search engine--that accused the movie studios' trade group of intercepting the company's private e-mails, was tossed out of court last week.
But while a U.S. District judge found that the Motion Picture Association of America had not violated the federal Wiretap Act, as TorrentSpy's attorneys had argued, the MPAA acknowledged in court records that it paid $15,000 to obtain private e-mails belonging to TorrentSpy executives.
The MPAA's acknowledgement is significant because it comes at a time when the group is trying to limit illegal file sharing by imploring movie fans to act ethically and resist the temptation to download pirated movies. To critics, the revelation by the MPAA is a possible sign that the organization is itself not above adopting unethical practices in its fight against file sharing.
"Ethically, it's pretty clear that reading other people's e-mail is wrong," said Lorrie Cranor, an associate research professor and Internet privacy expert at Carnegie Mellon University. "Being offered someone else's e-mails by a third party should have been a red flag."
The MPAA, which says that illegal file sharing costs the film industry more than $2 billion annually, did not respond to interview requests.
In court records, the MPAA said that the person who obtained the e-mails did so before approaching the group with an offer to sell the information and that he signed a contract stating he had come by the correspondence through lawful means.
Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney said: "We believe that the MPAA, when it paid $15,000 for about 30 pages of e-mails, knew or should have known they were involved in purchasing something in a wrongful manner."
Rothken said that TorrentSpy will appeal the court's decision that the pilfering of TorrentSpy's e-mail did not violate the Wiretap Act.
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According to court documents, the MPAA came into possession of the e-mails after first being approached by Robert Anderson. Anderson is a former business associate of Justin Bunnell, TorrentSpy's founder.
Anderson allegedly "hacked" into TorrentSpy's e-mail system and rigged it so that "every incoming and outgoing e-mail message would also be copied and forwarded to his anonymous Google e-mail account," records show.
Anderson contacted Dean Garfield, the MPAA's senior legal counsel, in June 2005. Anderson told Garfield that he had an informant who supplied him with the e-mails.
District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper also agreed with the MPAA that TorrentSpy failed to prove that the information obtained by Anderson qualified as trade secrets.
Correction: This story misidentified the former business associate of TorrentSpy's founder. His name is Robert Anderson.
Copyright ©1995-2007 CNET Networks, Inc. All rights reserved.
Tampering and stealing physical mail is a federal crime...
yet theft of digital mail is A-OK?
I want to have what that judge is smoking.
American Dreams
This is what "the other half" means.
Blar.
If you want to download movies, do it. Unless the MAFIAA starts giving you decent prices, you're not morally obligated to pay their stratospheric fees.
I support civil disobedience. Just encrypt your stuff (hint: WASTE P2P) and do it at your own risk.
a lawsuit filed by TorrentSpy against the MPAA, accusing it of intercepting the company's private e-mails
We already know that the **AA can get away with whatever it wants, and that most judges have as much integrity as most politicians.
But what I want to know here - Why did TorrentSpy sue rather than pressing charges? This doesn't sounds like a civil offense, it sounds like an outright criminal action on the parts of both the MPAA and Anderson.
We should have people looking at going to prison over this, not having some petty countersuit thrown out of court.
only personal interests.
Two parts of this article do not make sense together:
"...he signed a contract stating he had come by the correspondence through lawful means."
"Anderson allegedly "hacked" into TorrentSpy's e-mail system and rigged it so that "every incoming and outgoing e-mail message would also be copied and forwarded to his anonymous Google e-mail account," records show."
"Blah blah blah blah, bleh bleh bleh bleh, bwagwawga bgawgagwa more cash brwhawahaha"
Read radical news here
The law exists to serve the people, not a subset of the people. I bet you hated the 'Underground Railroad' when you learned about it last year in History class, huh?
Blar.
was the Sony rootkit. It will go down in history as a significant event. Perhaps the start of all out open war between the corporations and the ordinary people. The day that a company committed, and got clean away with, a serious criminal offense in pursuit of mitigating a lesser one was the turning point. It signalled in clear terms ordinary citizens are not afforded the protection of the law against corporate criminals.
Make of that what you will, but it is a fact. Without the legal redress it up to us to provision our own protection and deal our own justice by whatever means necessary.
I'll swang on Hoppy.. dont try an stop me.. hoppy too sloppy... smokin that poppy.... probly coulda caught me... droppin Hoppy like Joppy... just dont stoppy!!!
Sincerely,
RIAA
"from the government-is-setting-a-great-precident-on-this dept." ... well, firstly the institution making the ruling is called the "judiciary" which is not the same as "the government" (regardless of what Bush thinks). secondly, torrentspy is nothing but a haven for copyright infringement ... I'd like someone to find me just 10 examples of non-copyright infringed content from torrentspy. i love getting the occassional stargate series, or whatever, with the aid of search engines such as torrent spy but I'm not confused about what I'm doing - infringing copyright.
Forget whether this involved breaking into computers or not. It sounds to me that the MPAA did not have copyright over these emails. Therefore copying them was piracy, right?
The MPAA's acknowledgement is significant because it comes at a time when the group is trying to limit illegal file sharing by imploring movie fans to act ethically and resist the temptation to download pirated movies.
Morality can be a cover story of the vicious and manipulative, who set up rules so they can break them. People who mean well but are unaccustomed to the reality that life is combat, will try to follow the rules that are actually set up to constrain them.
I will always pursue an option where I do not have to be a lying, cheating bastard to succeed because that is not in my design. I try to avoid those situations where psychologically normal people come in line behind the lying, cheating bastards.
But I am sure, in their own press releases, they are "acting ethically."
technical writing / development
OK, so I can pay someone, who had already copied a movie before they talked to me, for a copy of a movie, right? I am getting the movie leagally, by purchasing it.
If you feel this judge is especially wrong, clueless, or even really right on, about this, you can make your views heard at The Robing Room. This actually seems to carry some weight in some circles.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
Hell, they should have purposely fed misinformation through that channel. Man, what fun could have been had. Such a missed opportunity. Hmm. Maybe I should set up a tracker site just as a honey pot for them.
For people, business and government it seems that ethics are only important when they are convenient. It seems that they are not convenient very often anymore.
Can you say Criminal Conspiracy?
I thought you could.
"In court records, the MPAA said that the person who obtained the e-mails did so before approaching the group with an offer to sell the information and that he signed a contract stating he had come by the correspondence through lawful means."
While I'm sure the RIAA knew they were in a gray area, they did cover their asses.
Warning slashdotters; the dark lord is coming take your soul! Or is it the MPAA? (Is that pronounced "oompa"?)
The emails were copied without authorization. That's a copyright violation, with up to a $100,000 fine for each copyrighted work (email). Following the RIAA's tactic of using the presence of MP3s on a person's hard drive as evidence, the RIAA's possession of these emails is sufficient evidence for shutdown notices. Torrentspy should send notices to the RIAA members' ISPs and email services for unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials, requesting logs of all emails sent by/to them, and asking that these services be terminated in order to stop the violations. On top of that, I'm sure that Andersen didn't just give them a copy of these emails and they sat on some hard drive collecting dust. They were most likely distributed within the RIAA and amongst the lawyers, thus making them all guilty of unauthorized distribution of copyrighted materials.
The beauty is if the RIAA defends itself, it undermines its own arguments in the lawsuits it's filing against MP3 sharing.
'Cause you're doing a shitty job, and I'm gonna hire some Puerto Ricans who'll do a better job for less.
Blar.
Except, as far as I know, it's not illegal (yet) to merely be a tracker, let alone an "aggregator", assuming you know what that word means.
It looks like the MPAA/RIAA have taken your advice. Whenever they don't like the law, they buy a Congressman and get it changed.
Fixed it for you.
I'm sorry, but if you've actually read what happened here, they were buying emails from their opponents. We have a legal process for reading your opponent's email -- it's called "discovery". An organization willing to resort to illegal tactics to accomplish that has no place suing anyone for anything -- fucking hypocrites.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
They seem to have covered their asses, since the guy broke into bittorrents computers without the MPAA's knowledge they cannot be held liable, if he had done it after they had hired him then things would be different. But they can also not use these emails in any trial ever again since it has been discovered they were obtained illegally. Bittorrent plain and simple sued the wrong party over this, in fact the MPAA could probably now sue this guy for entrapment also, by claiming he got the emails legally (he even signed a piece of paper) they could probably bring suit against him saying he was intentionally trying to ruin their credibility. I would not want to be this guy right now.
Just look at the cal/mexico border, the mexican side is a dump wasteland hole.
And please, go check the stats out.... there a lot of illegals that cause serious car accidents and commit crimes of violent nature.
And the final big point, the mexican govt is the biggest corrupt cartel that helps the drug lords via the military sell billions in drugs to usa locals.
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.
Anyone got the guys address and GPS coords and googlemap URL for his address?
How about sending a billion $$$s worth of illegal DVDs to his address?
Liberty freedom are no1, not dicks in suits.