TorrentSpy, a bittorrent search engine, has decided to block U.S. IP addresses from using the site. The move comes in response to TorrentSpy's ongoing lawsuit with the MPAA. Back in June a judge ordered the site to begin logging user information and turn it over to the MPAA. Because doing so violates TorrentSpy's privacy policy, the company has elected to ban U.S. users rather than track them on the site [Update: Just to clarify the ban affects searching, not browsing or downloading].
Visiting TorrentSpy from a U.S. IP address will pull up a page with the following note:
TorrentSpy is appealing the court ruling, but for the time being it has decided to block US users rather than give up any user personal data to the MPAA.
Savvy users will of course note that by using a proxy service like anonymouse.org U.S. users can still access TorrentSpy content.
But the issue is not so much access to the site, rather, the potential long term effects of the case. The data harvesting requested by the MPAA and okayed by the judge could set a precedent that compels your ISP, search engine and a whole host of other services to log your activities as well.
Which, as Fred von Lohmann of the Electronic Frontier Foundation points out, is a tad bit ridiculous. “A court would never think to force a company to record telephone calls, transcribe employee conversations, or log other ephemeral information. There is no reason why the rules should be different simply because a company uses digital technologies.”
EFF Staff Attorney Corynne McSherry also adds that “this unprecedented ruling has implications well beyond the file sharing context. Giving litigants the power to rewrite their opponent's privacy policies poses a risk to all Internet users.”
When the TorrentSpy case was first announced over a year ago, von Lohmann warned that its implications extended well beyond just one bittorrent tracker and could have a chilling effect on the internet as a whole.
