BitTorrent tracker TorrentSpy is closing its doors. After years of court battles against copyright holders and lots of money poured into its legal defense, TorrentSpy has decided to shut down its service, according to The Register. That's one point for the MPAA.
TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell, however, has stated that the loss of the court battle doesn't have anything to do with the company's decision to close down its service. Bunnell posted the following statement on TorrentSpy:
We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 24, 2008.
The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of our users and ourselves.
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.
It was a wild ride,
The TorrentSpy Team