TorrentSpy ordered to start tracking visitors

http://news.com.com/i/ne/pg/fd_2007/...ers_120x90.jpg

"A court decision reached last month but under seal until Friday could force Web sites to track visitors if the sites become defendants in a lawsuit."

On May 29th a federal judge, Jacqueline Chooljian, from the Central District of California in L.A. ordered TorrentSpy--a Bittorrent (BT) search engine--to "create logs detailing users' activities on the site."

In TorrentSpy's privacy policy, it states that it will never track visitors without their consent and Chooljian "granted a stay of the order on Friday to allow TorrentSpy to file an appeal" no later than June 12, according to TorrentSpy's attorney, Ira Rothken.

Rothken states that "It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users" and "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."

The case began when the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) sued TorrentSpy (and some others) in February of '06 for facilitating the use of torrents to download pirated files.

EFF's attorney, Fred von Lohmann, calls the ruling "unprecedented" and from his continuing review of the case says that it is a "troubling court order" where "We shouldn't let Web site logging policies be set by litigation."

:source: Source: C|Net News.com

since when do US courts affect the Netherlands?

hmm...

Amazing that a global entity can be dominated by one single country.

Does this ruling mean that the US courts can require non US based websites to log US users entering their websites? I think not...

Remember that law is regional, and not global, and a law in one country may not be law in another.

Mind you, when reading the news on the front page, it always sounds like the world is an extension to the USA. Maybe if news items actually explicitly state the country of origin prior to telling us the news, less confusion will ensue. Just a thought.

I will be waiting (?)

How long before this affects private trackers?

Quote:

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Originally Posted by pastry

How long before this affects private trackers?

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It won't, unless trackers are governed under US law. If the domain owner is a US citizen, then this is likely, even if they host their server in another country, but a citizen of a European country is not under the jurisdiction of the US courts, so the judges would have no power whatsoever.

The only time a US court could impose a penalty on a non US citizen is if they could convince the country where the individual lives to extradite that person to the US for crimes against the US. This would be a hard one to facilitate, since it is hard enough to get real criminals extradited these days, let alone virtual criminals.

there is always piritebey :) for all leechers

New information can be found here: TorrentSpy ruling a 'weapon of mass discovery'.

Feel free to comment there. :wave: