12 Mag Entertainment Industry Wins a Round on Piracy
Wall Street Journal
By Sarah McBride
In what was seen as a victory for entertainment companies, a federal judge in Los Angeles issued damages totaling $111 million against an Internet company that helped users find copyright material free.
The defendant, Valence Media LLC’s TorrentSpy, was one of the Web’s largest “torrent trackers,” meaning it helped people find movies and other material they might want to download. TorrentSpy closed in March, telling users on its site the legal climate was “simply too hostile.” It didn’t store the video files on its own site but directed users to other locations.
The dollar value of the award — which Judge Florence-Marie Cooper said she calculated by assigning a value of $30,000 to each of the 3,699 infringements shown — should get the attention of people running similar sites. But they are largely based overseas and out of reach of U.S. law.
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Wall Street Journal, by Sarah McBride, May 8, 2008
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121020844695775655.html