A bit of scary news appeared at ZDnet yesterday. We all know MPAA are little stupid sometimes but they take their job seriously and they still have a lot of power and manners how to achieve their goals. TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent search engine, was ordered on May 29 by a federal judge in the Central District of California in Los Angeles to create logs detailing users' activities on the site. TorrentSpy has promised in its privacy policy never to track visitors without their consent. “It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users,†Rothken said. “If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise.â€
This is believed to be the first time a judge has ordered a defendant to log visitor activity and then hand over the information to the plaintiff. Many Web companies keep visitor logs, which can include Internet Protocol addresses, as well as other information. Some choose not to record this data, including EFF, von Lohmann said. The TorrentSpy homepage ic currently displaying a brief message about current events and informs about the state of actual monitoring:
While we use Google Analytics for website statistics, TorrentSpy servers have never tracked your IP Address, the searches you make, or how you use the site. We are dedicated to your privacy and we are fighting for your rights.
It will be interesting to see how will this case end - I know many admins of torrent sites around the world and failure (for TorrentSpy) could mean a lot of troubles, as MPAA could easily continue in similar activities with other torrent websites. The main problem of TorrentSpy is it was hosted in the States for a long time (currently in Holland), and so it became way more vulnerable to American law and institutions. The site is topping almost 1 million visitors a day with more than 16% from United States, so this decision would probably have serious consequences.
