14 DAY TRIAL // The war against the BitTorrent websites continues with Fred Goldman, the father of Ronald Goldman, as the main character. Fred Goldman, the copyright holder for O.J. Simpson's book "If I Did It" sued The Pirate Bay, for publishing the book on the Internet. This move caused a loss of about $150,000, the complaint reads according to AP. The lawsuit was filed in Los Angeles County Superior Court, claiming that the Swedish website caused important financial losses for Fred Goldman. Moreover, the BitTorrent website refused to remove the download, because "they are not subject to the laws of the United States," AP continued.
Although it was not confirmed if this was only a glitch or something caused by the legal dispute, The Pirate Bay went offline on Thursday for a limited period of time.
"It's the wealth through the advertising that allows the site to remain. Ron Goldman LLC will never be able to stop these pirates from posting that book online but they can do that in the poorhouse," David Cook, Fred Goldman's lawyer, told AP.
The Pirate Bay is not the only BitTorrent website sent to the judge, as several other similar services were involved into legal disputes because of the content published on their pages. TorrentSpy, another popular BitTorrent technology, was sued because it provided access to pirated content. Moreover, the court demanded TorrentSpy to provide private information about the users who accessed and downloaded content, in order to support the investigation.
TorrentSpy quickly rejected the demand, explaining that its internal privacy guidelines prohibit this action and protects the users against this kind of requests. Since the US court highlighted the country's laws in order to force TorrentSpy to reveal the requested details, the BitTorrent website took the decision to restrict the access of the US users, in a move meant to protect them and their privacy.