TorrentSpy Closes Doors to US Users [+ Related News]

[Hairbautt]

"Saying it wants to protect user privacy, TorrentSpy said Monday that it will no longer allow visitors from the United States to use the site. The BitTorrent search engine's servers are located in the Netherlands, and it falls under the jurisdiction of the European Union, as do the copyright laws that govern it.

The decision to ban US users from the site was not due to any compulsion from the courts, it assured. "Rather it arises out of an uncertain legal climate in the United States regarding user privacy and the apparent tension between US and European Union Internet privacy laws," the company said."

Source: BetaNews
TorrentFreak: TorrentSpy Blocks Searches From US Visitors
_____________________________________________________________________
BetaNews: TorrentSpy Ordered to Hand Over User Data - August 28, 2007
C|Net News.com: Court rules against TorrentSpy in hacking case - August 28, 2007

[silent h3ro]

Well there's one less good tracker I can use. The good thing is that there are still hundreds of others to choose from.

[iNSOMNiA]

use proxy..

FTW!

[peat moss]

Blame the Canadiens !

[ulun64]

Why didn't blame US?

[Skiz]

Well there's one less good tracker I can use. The good thing is that there are still hundreds of others to choose from.

"good tracker"? Far from it. If you just need a tracker with everything on it, use Demonoid.

Otherwise, you should be using good private trackers exclusively.

[silent h3ro]

Well there's one less good tracker I can use. The good thing is that there are still hundreds of others to choose from.

"good tracker"? Far from it. If you just need a tracker with everything on it, use Demonoid.

Otherwise, you should be using good private trackers exclusively.

Sure Demonoid has almost everything but the speed of their torrents generally suck depending on what you want.

The biggest thing I like about TorrentSpy was it's layout and graphics, it's almost the same as Demonoid speed-wise and quantity-wise.

[Hairbautt]

They didn't go downhill with the FileRights search filter to remove copyright infringing stuff?

___________________________________________________________________________
More news:

It looks like TorrentSpy's decision to ban US users from its site may have been done in response to a court order anyway.
Although it ceased operating in the US officially on Sunday, a court order was issued the next day which required it to hand over information on the activities of its US users.

TorrentSpy had appealed a June decision ruling that it had to hand over user information found in the RAM of its servers. It argued that RAM was temporary storage and that it would be difficult to glean any information pertinent to the case.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper denied the claim on Monday, saying that even if it is temporary, the company will still be required to hand over any stored information found there.

Representatives for TorrentSpy are using its Sunday decision as cover to say that they won't have anything to surrender to the court. It also said it will re-appeal the decision in the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals.

TorrentSpy had claimed that the original move to end US operations "was not compelled by any Court," but with the timing of its action and Monday's court rulings, that response could be considered questionable. The MPAA, which has been leading the charge against the site had no public comment as of press time.

/added to thread

[abu_has_the_power]

i haven't used torrentspy since the news that they'll be forced to log ips.

but this is a good decent move for them.

[4play]

As far as i know torrentspy never was a tracker it just cached torrents off other trackers.

They should have just told the us to take a flying leap since they are located in Holland they really shouldn't care. I think they have been taking measures recently to make themselves more like a search engine like the web search button and having the download button for the torrent now point to the original site.