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Judge Rules TorrentSpy Destroyed Evidence
Come play kdice writes "A federal judge has handed the MPAA a resounding victory in its copyright infringement lawsuit against TorrentSpy. Judge Florence-Marie Cooper entered a default judgment against Justin Bunnell and the rest of the named defendants in Columbia Pictures et al. v. Justin Bunnell et al. after finding that TorrentSpy 'engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence'. After being sued, TorrentSpy mounted a vigorous defense, including a counter-suit it filed against the MPAA in May 2006, but, behind the scenes, the court documents paint a picture of a company desperately trying to bury any and all incriminating evidence. TorrentSpy has announced its intention to appeal, but its conduct makes a reversal unlikely."
When the CIA destroys evidence that they tortured prisoners, the entire Justice Department jumps to their defense and gives their director a medal. When a small company that just provides links to pirated movies destroys evidence to protect its users from the thugs at the MPAA, they're criminals and must be punished!
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
Perhaps a lawyer can tell us which has worse penalties, destruction of evidence or being found guilty of helping piracy. I imagine it's the latter.
The CIA's tapes were destroyed in 2005 — long before any investigations into "torture" came about. Thus it was not "destruction of evidence", but merely "destruction of tapes". CIA today does not deny, that they did use waterboarding, so it is not clear, what those tapes would be in evidence of.
For it to be called "destruction of evidence", the destroyed materials must be important to an ongoing investigation/lawsuit... This is what TorrentSpy (unlike CIA, they did it to hide doing, what they now claim they have not done) has done, according to the judge, and your attempt to defend them on the basis of their being "a small company" is quite pathetic.
In Soviet Washington the swamp drains you.
I've always wondered what I would do if I got a letter in the mail telling me I was being sued by the MPAA or RIAA (obviously not the same as a large site like torrentspy, but kinda related), we keep our wireless router open, default passwords, broadcast ssid, no encryption, 50 leases, no MAC filtering, nothing. I know it sounds bad, but we figure that if we ever got a notice from one of these organizations that we could simply say that there's no way to know who downloaded these things, our wireless is open! We have neighbors and other people in our DHCP client list and it actually makes me feel more secure (I manage my actual security at my computer, not at the gateway) since I feel like it would make for a good defense. However, what to do with the offending data? I've always thought that if I DoD wiped all my disks, obviously that would leave no evidence, but could you actually get in trouble for doing that? Do they send you documents telling you that kind of thing is illegal? What if I just took out my data drives, hid them in the attic and cleaned out my logs and MRU data with Adaware? Is it really that hard to react to these kinds of things for the average consumer or am I missing a great deal?
Not familiar with TorrentSpy Admins, but I would imagine they did it to protect themselves from jail rather than a altruistic attempt to withhold your IP address from the MPAA. Its the cynic in me speaking....
...and it should be known by now
I'm sorry but a person's right to control their creations should not trump my right to use my property as I see fit.
The difference between the GPL and regular use of copyright is that the GPL is intended to support the freedom of the individual to use his computer as he sees fit. There is absolutely no contradiction in supporting the GPL and calling for an abolition of copyright.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Except that the GPL is unenforceable without copyrights...
Slashdot needs a "-1, Wrong" moderation option.
The Urban Hippie
I make a living from copyright. I am a writer, and the thing I sell is 'intellectual property.' In spite of this, I agree with the poster you quote. The ability to control my creations is not an intrinsic right. It is a bargain made with society. I agree to distribute my work and to permit certain uses of it under the banner of fair use, and society agrees, in return, to enforce my exclusivity.
The problem with the *AA is that they are violating the spirit of this in a number of ways. Their insistence on DRM (including CSS on DVDs when backed by things like the DMCA) limits the fair use rights. Their refusal to distribute their media in a form that the market obviously wants (or, in some geographical locations, at all, or at least in a timely fashion) violates the first part of the agreement.
I am not in favour of abolishing copyright completely. It is a nice bargaining chip to use. Without something equally simple, while I would still write I probably wouldn't publish my writings. Copyright, however, should be absolutely contingent on the creator (or their publisher) distributing their works. I would even advocate some form of compulsory licensing, so that people can distribute my work as much as they like (with or without my consent) and pay a royalty directly. Alternatively, I can wrap my works up in as much DRM as I like, but once someone cracks it then I lost it all because I don't get to claim copyright on works which don't allow fair use.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Which, if TorrentSpy were to be believed, would potentially require modification of the software. Merely because something "was present in the RAM at some point" doesn't imply that it's easy to log, otherwise DRM would be even more broken than it currently is.
Now, of course, we've discovered that TorrentSpy were actually lying about this, but it doesn't change the fact that it was an unreasonable request by the judge, especially considering this is discovery. Are you really going to say that people should have to start gathering entirely new evidence to support discovery?
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!