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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.
but from what I read, they did destroy evidence which they clearly aren't allowed to do. Sounds like bad decisions on the part of Torrentspy led to this.
Maybe if they left things as they were they could have fared better.
Gone!
I'm glad those sleazy rats at the MPAA won't be getting their greedy hands on my IP address from torrentspy.
This is the digital equivalent of throwing yourself on a grenade to save your comrads. Right on.
Thank you kindly,
AC
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?
I'm really sick of our Federal system, as most of you know. It's completely ridiculous that law-school educated judges can not read the Constitution, and understand the basic definitions of freedom.
Copyright is a Constitutionally-protected power of government. I understand that. I hate copyright, I would never use it, but I accept it. To infringe on copyright, a person must take someone else's art, and make a copy. That person who paints their own version of a copyright-protected oil painting will use oils and canvas to breach copyright. The oil manufacturer is not guilty. The canvas manufacturer is not guilty. Exxon/Mobil who provided fuel for you to drive to buy the oil and canvas are not guilty. Ford, who provided the car to get to the store to buy oil and canvas are not guilty. The person selling you a book with a license to reprint that oil, is not guilty. You, the person doing the copying, are guilty.
TorrentSpy is like the gun, or the gun manufacturer. The murderer is the person actively aiming the weapon in anger, and pulling the trigger. The person selling the gun shouldn't care what the end user is going to do, other than warn them that they're buying something dangerous. The person making the gun should not be held responsible. The ACT of committing a crime comes from actually committing a crime.
If copyright is moral, and valid, then the person doing the copying should be found guilty. Hosting a torrent is not hosting a file.
If you vote, please vote against retention on every position. Judges need to be kicked out as quick as they're voted in. Vote against incumbents who enforce the law, too (police chief, etc). There's no reason to keep anyone in office long enough to abuse power. All these judges are just power-hungry. They can't understand that copyright is protected by the artist, only against someone else copying the art.
This is the same judge who decided information stored in RAM is easy to document and filter.
Since that topic has been expounded upon, here are some articles about the judge in the case:
1. Judge dismisses trial for prosecutor's misconduct
Here, she dismissed a case when the prosecutors offered a plea agreement to a witness so he could not testify for the defense.
2. Notorious BIG Trial mistrial declared
In this instance, she declared a mistrial when LAPD was withholding evidence from the trial.
3. Pooh Trial Thrown out (heh heh)
A trial involving the Winnie the Pooh was ruled in favor of Disney after the family was found to have "tampered" with files at Disney.
The judge has a love for evidence. Torrentspy shoulda known what would happen if they messed around with it.
import system.cool.Sig;
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
They don't grade fathers, but if your daughter's a stripper, you fucked up. --Chris Rock
Not preserving evidence != destroying evidence. I'm thinking the most sensible standard for courts to follow is minimalist. That is, no changes should be made to operations. Whatever information was being kept before should be preserved. And whatever information was not being kept for whatever reason (limited resources, goes stale quickly) should not be fair game for judges to order preservation of. So we have an argument over whether the info the judge was ordering TorrentSpy to keep was long term or not. But I wonder if the whole argument is beside the point, because it should apply only to 3rd parties, not to the accused.
A trouble with this standard is it encourages businesses to make destruction, even gratuitous destruction, routine. Many businesses do routinely destroy information that may be of interest someday to researchers, historians, restorers, and collectors, as well as still have value to the business, solely because the risks of having it around and having it be used against them are more than the value. Guilty until proven innocent has that advantage over the other way around-- people will preserve anything and everything that might prove their innocence.
The problem is resolved with the 5th Amendment right against self-incrimination. (Unless that doesn't apply somehow? Civil trials? Seems it should.) Why should TorrentSpy or anyone else be forced to produce info to hang themselves with? Why can't the MPAA have to meet the higher standard of proving TorrentSpy's guilt without any help from TorrentSpy? With the 5th Amendment standard in place, businesses can make their record keeping decisions freer of bias from legal requirements. No one should have to play stupid with "uhh, I forgot". The judge's orders to preserve data is therefore moot-- TorrentSpy cannot be forced to produce the data, whether or not it exists, or should be preserved.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
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
I think definitely on a small scale at least. I live in the US but regularly violate copyright and the DMCA by burning copies of my CDs, ripping them to MP3, and downloading and installing codecs and DeCSS for viewing DVDs. Legally I don't have the right to bypass the CSS encryption on the DVDs I purchased by using DeCSS, but I do it anyway because the laws that make it illegal are unjust in my opinion. As to the sort of whole sale violation you see at places like TorrentSpy, well, that's a whole other ball game, sort of a Apples and Oranges thing. There may be some argument that it's only fair because of the way the media cartels have trampled our rights that we stick it to them so to speak, and the damages handed out for these things are definitely out of line, but whether that justifies the behavior I don't know.
Curiosity was framed, Ignorance killed the cat.
I feel current copyright laws are so one sided as to be ignored.
I pay for cable and if I record a show that's fine, but if I download a show because I forgot to TiVo it then I am breaking the law.
Ripping a DVD that I paid for is breaking the law.
Downloading a CD that got scratched is breaking the law.
IMO: I will pay for content once and only once. If you want to sell me new content bundled with old aka (movie + directors cut) that's fine but when it's identical content then I have already paid for it.
You really should pay attention more. In fact, here's a little primer from someone who should know the music business: David Byrne talks record companies and the current forms of control and distribution. It's a fascinating read.
/. at all, however your current thoughts of how the business of music is run is, I fear, off base. A great many artists have few rights to their own songs which instead are owned, by and large, by the record companies who are looking for new ways to squeeze blood from a stone.
Please pay special attention to how much the artist cut is in traditional CD sales compared to the new digital distribution. You will find a huge disparity in what record companies are claiming and what is actually happening.
I don't think TorrentSpy will get much sympathy from
I wouldn't call this a resounding victory. There are still plenty o' torrent sites out there.
The MPAA, like the RIAA, has failed the grasp the significance of what's unfolding in the 21st century. However you feel about sharing copyrighted material (right or wrong), suing sites into oblivion will not stop what is apparently going to be the new pervasive form of distribution. Just as the horse and buggy gave way to the automobile, so the delivery mechanism of physically moving data around on DVDs in face of the industry's unwillingness to provide it's own online delivery alternative, will naturally give way to a more efficient system.
Take a hint: For about the past 70 years, advertising has fully paid for free content via broadcast radio and TV.
The MAFIAAs say that a lot. But I hope it's not true. If it is, then they really are getting an unfairly generous deal, as the GP said.
I could see arguing that one buys a license, not the physical work. In that case, if the media were lost or destroyed, replacements would be available at a nominal charge to cover plastic, postage, overhead, etc. Personal backup copies to be stored safely would be OK under that concept, or the reverse -- making a copy to play and saving the original.
I could also see making the argument that you bought a copy of a work, it's now yours to do with as you please -- "first sale" doctrine. You could give it to your friends, or sell it to someone else. Of course if you break it, tough. Buy another, just like if you broke a dinner plate.
But as you state it, they want the best of both worlds. You buy a license to to a specific copy of a work. You can play it or not. But you can't back it up, you can't transfer the work to a new medium so you can continue to use it after the original technology is no longer supported. All you own is the license to play copy # 1267888993 of "Oops, I did it again" on CD.
Kudos, though. You did get a car analogy in. It might be better to add that you need to buy a license to operate each car you own, and one for each friend or relative that might borrow your car. And each license wouldn't cost a $50 fee from the DMV, but would be sold as part of the car, and each license would cost the full price of a car. Trade-ins not accepted. So a two-car, two-driver household would need to "buy" four cars, that is, one license for each driver for each car.
I am not a crackpot.
There are two steps to the RIAA's lawsuits: the "settlement" letter and the actual lawsuit itself. If you destroy data after receiving the settlement letter, you're a wise person. If you destroy data after receiving the lawsuit papers, you're toast if they catch you (as noted in this article).
I would not make any destruction of data obvious. A wiped disk is a sure sign of intentional destruction.
If I were to destroy data, my plan would be to use the "Craftsman Hammer" hard drive data destruction tool and proper trash disposal procedures. Followed by a clean install of the entire system on a new hard drive. If you're sued, you have to have a clean system at that point in time. They will compel an examination of your computer(s). The only way to assure that nothing is found is to have nothing for them to find.
Finger pointing and denial of found evidence have not proven to be a good defense against the RIAA.
Now, before a lot of people start saying "well, if enough people commit murder should that be legal too?". The analogy you're looking for is not with crimes like murder or rape but with artifical, imposed-by-government crimes like prohibition.
In a democracy, the basis of legitimacy of laws or governments should be a mandate from the people. While I don't trust polls very much, and I don't have any hard numbers, but I'd be willing to bet that most people don't see non-commercial copyright violations as much of a problem. I'm not even sure you can prove beyond a reasonable doubt that private non-commercial copyright violations is costing anybody any money.
Not unless you accept the RIAA/MPAA voodoo accounting that every single copyright violation = one lost sale.
The plural form of "anecdote" is "anecdotes", not "evidence".
The thing about turning over ip addresses when they claimed they weren't available was wrong but that info wouldn't have been useful against them, it would have been used to go after people that posted to the forums as automatic pirates for posting to a forum.
What they did do was clean up their forums which I believe partially what the MPAA's complaint were about. Further they didn't destroy old posted, they archived them. They removed movie clips.
When they were ordered to log IP's again they simply refused to further provide service to US citizens until the matter was resolved.
Sounds to me like another judge confused by computers.
You have two different entities here. The search engine itself and the web forums.