Andre Yoskowitz
25 Jun 2007 14:22
The large public torrent tracker TorrentSpy, which has been ordered by a judge to start logging user activity, has now decided to give in and begin fighting piracy by adding a content filtering tool called FileRights.
The tool will filter content based on their hashes. FileRights however, will need movie studios and music labels to supply file hashes for their content if the tools is to be at all successful.
This seems to be a "good faith" effort by the admins of TorrentSpy in an effort to reduce penalties or sentences in their pending legal case.
TorrentSpy was ordered last week to log user activity but the site has claimed that they have never kept logs and therefore cannot produce any. The judge has said however, that the information necessary is in the server RAM and that TorrentSpy just needs to record it.
TorrentSpy is fighting the ruling with help from the EFF but have abandoned the fight over filtering. Their decision should show that they have no desire to incite infringement but it wont get them off the hook for the past years of infringement.
Source:
Arstechnica