Torrentspy: MPAA Wants to Ban the .torrent Format

MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) is continuing its crusade against pirated, online available, content and is suing the www.torrentspy.com search engine portal for copyright infringement.

Torrentspy is used by those who want to find links to movies and music; the next step is to download them with the world’s most popular file sharing service, BitTorrent, which according to CacheLogic is responsible for 35% of the Internet traffic.

The search engine’s lawyers reject MPAA’s accusations by saying that it isn’t any guiltier than Google, who’s doing this at a much larger scale.

Moreover, they say that the real purpose of the organization that protects the interests of the Hollywood studios is to ban the .torrent format. Considering MPAA’s actions against other peer-to-peer services and their results, the hypothesis that the organization is in fact trying to ban format makes a lot of sense.

In response to the organization’s lawsuit, Torrentspy has filed a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.

One of the Torrentspy lawyers, Ira Rothken, said the motion argued that Torrentspy does not link to Hollywood's copyrighted works.

The lawyer added that Torrentspy had cooperated with Hollywood in removing objectionable links to torrent files and did not actively promote copyright infringement.

"It cannot be held 'tertiary' liable for visitors' conduct that occurs away from its web search engine," BBC quoted Mr Rothken as saying.

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