Major Hollywood studios have won an anti-piracy lawsuit against a now-defunct website that indexed peer-to-peer file-sharing of movies and TV shows, according to court documents released Wednesday.
U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, in a four-page opinion issued Tuesday, ruled that Valence Media -- the parent company of the TorrentSpy website -- had encouraged, promoted and enabled copyright infringement.
The judge ruled there were 3,699 acts of copyright infringement-- and ordered the company to pay 30,000 dollars for each one -- bringing a total monetary judgment of over 110 million dollars.
Cooper also issued a permanent injunction that bans Valence Media from engaging in similar activity in the future.
The Motion Picture Association of America hailed the judge's decision as a "significant victory."
"This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites," said MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman.
He said 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.
Major studios, including Columbia Pictures, Warner Bros. and Paramount Pictures, filed the lawsuit in February 2006.
Judge Cooper issued a default judgment last December against TorrentSpy and ruled that its operators were liable for copyright infringement.
TorrentSpy was permanently shut down on March 24, stating in a message on its website that "the legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile."
The motion picture industry loses more than 18 billion dollars annually as a result of movie piracy, according to the MPAA.
More than 7 billion dollars in losses are due to illegal Internet distributions, while about 11 billion dollars is the result of illegal copying and bootlegging, the trade group said.
Source: Xinhua
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