Beleaguered BitTorrent search engine shuts down

by Elizabeth Montalbano

March 27, 2008 —

Expensive legal battles have caused TorrentSpy, the search engine for the BitTorrent
file-sharing service, to shut down.

A note on the home page
of TorrentSpy's Web site said it is shutting down "not due to any court
order or agreement," but because of a team decision.

TorrentSpy has spent the past two years and hundreds of thousands of dollars
"defending the rights of our users and ourselves" in a legal climate
that was "hostile" to torrent files, according to the note, which
is attributed to the TorrentSpy team.

"Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent
with our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore,
we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for
our users -- permanent shutdown," the team said.

TorrentSpy was a search engine that helped visitors find torrent files on the
Web. Torrent files are often music or movie files stored in an easily shared
file format. The search engine came under legal fire from the entertainment
industry, which in general does not want licensed content to be distributed
royalty-free.

In December, the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) won a copyright
infringement case against TorrentSpy that it had filed in 2006. TorrentSpy argued
that its site doesn't contain any copyrighted works or links to copyrighted
works, does not promote copyright infringement and can't be held liable for
the actions of visitors once they leave its Web site. The site lost its case
because the court ruled it had tampered with evidence.

IDG News Service