The battle against BitTorrent websites suspected of copyright infringement and distribution of pirated material reached another milestone yesterday when the movie studios, represented by the MPAA, won the lawsuit against TorrentSpy. The legal dispute was started a long time ago when, just like many other BitTorrent services on the web, TorrentSpy was sued for copyright infringement, MPAA making serious efforts to shut down its servers and take the website offline. The lawsuit was filed in February 2006 and, after more than two years, TorrentSpy decided to close its servers.

"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," a notification published at that time on the main page of TorrentSpy explained the closure.

However, TorrentSpy officials said the shut down of their servers was not forced by the federal forces because they took the decision by their own to protect the users' privacy. Some time ago, an US court asked TorrentSpy to provide private details about the users accessing the service. In order to keep them safe, TorrentSpy banned the access of the US members who were the only ones forced to comply to the requirement.

Yesterday, a federal judge in Los Angeles fined TorrentSpy $110 million on behalf of the MPAA accusations of copyright infringement. Obviously, the MPAA sees the court ruling as an important step for the fight against copyright infringement services and explains that this is the perfect example of what other websites may get if they continue to provide their illegal services.

"This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites," said Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA. "The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders."