TorrentSpy, Copyright, Sex, Lies, and Videotape

Over at TechDirt Mike Masnick is reporting on the closure of TorrentSpy after an adverse court ruling made the site increasingly non-viable as a file sharing community.

Masnick notes that: The saga between TorrentSpy and MPAA will certainly be declared a "win" (if not a "significant blow") by the MPAA, but it's really more of a sad statement on the way the entertainment industry goes about its business. He also suggests that the TorrentSpy closure has little to do with the complex copyright issues, many of which remain unresolved or even undefined with respect to file sharing websites.



Issues in the TorrentSpy court case and business model are representative of one of the great ironies of the evolving online landscape. As the success of YouTube and Myspace and others clearly indicate, websites are generally rewarded for creating a lot of online activity even if this activity includes a lot of copyrighted material. However it appears that the recording and film industries are going to fight file sharing sites far more aggressively than other social networking environments, and given current copyright law they are likely to continue to win the battles until the laws are changed to reflect the rapidly changing online conditions of file sharing.