TorrentSpy ordered to start tracking visitors
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.
By: Greg Sandoval, CNET News.com
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. The judge, Jacqueline Chooljian, however, granted a stay of the order on Friday to allow TorrentSpy to file an appeal.
The appeal must be filed by June 12, according to Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney. 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."
The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Columbia Pictures and other top Hollywood film studios, sued TorrentSpy and a host of others in February 2006 as part of a sweep against file-sharing companies. According to the MPAA, the search engine was sued for allegedly making it easier to download pirated files.
Representatives of the trade group could not be reached for comment.
The court's decision could have a chilling effect on e-commerce and digital entertainment sites, said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He calls the ruling "unprecedented."
EFF, which advocates for the public in digital rights' cases, is still reviewing the court's decision, but von Lohmann calls what he's seen so far a "troubling court order."
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.
"In general, a defendant is not required to create new records to hand over in discovery," von Lohmann said. "We shouldn't let Web site logging policies be set by litigation."
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.
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My Dad reckons that it will never happen, If Torrentspy lose this court case then cant they also check other webstites logs to see what youve been doing there?
Yer i like the idea of hiding behind a proxy? will it work?
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i know people really into internet and internet security. And to be 100% truthful there is pretty much nothing you can do to not be detected. You can use proxy's, firewalls, programs like Peer Guardian or whatever you want and they will still have a log they can track back to your ISP.
This also happened to a guy from Black-Cats who's ISP gave up his information. That is the problem. Your ISP has all the logs and if pressured will not think twice about saving their own skin by handing over logs on it's users.
There are no safe downloads, everyone knows the risks and they either choose to do it or not. And logs also means that you can decide just to stop doing it, but if you did it in the past then your still on the log and your still guilty.
