Source: http://news.com.com/2100-1030_3-6189866.html

A court decision reached last month but under seal until Friday could force Web sites to track visitors if the sites become defendants in a lawsuit.
TorrentSpy, a popular BitTorrent search engine, was ordered on May 29 by a federal judge in the Central District of California in Los Angeles to create logs detailing users' activities on the site. The judge, Jacqueline Chooljian, however, granted a stay of the order on Friday to allow TorrentSpy to file an appeal.
The appeal must be filed by June 12, according to Ira Rothken, TorrentSpy's attorney.
TorrentSpy has promised in its privacy policy never to track visitors without their consent.
"It is likely that TorrentSpy would turn off access to the U.S. before tracking its users," Rothken said. "If this order were allowed to stand, it would mean that Web sites can be required by discovery judges to track what their users do even if their privacy policy says otherwise."
The Motion Picture Association of America, which represents Columbia Pictures and other top Hollywood film studios, sued TorrentSpy and a host of others in February 2006 as part of a sweep against file-sharing companies. According to the MPAA, the search engine was sued for allegedly making it easier to download pirated files.
Representatives of the trade group could not be reached for comment.
The court's decision could have a chilling effect on e-commerce and digital entertainment sites, said Fred von Lohmann, an attorney with the Electronic Frontier Foundation. He calls the ruling "unprecedented."


EFF, which advocates for the public in digital rights' cases, is still reviewing the court's decision, but von Lohmann calls what he's seen so far a "troubling court order."
This is believed to be the first time a judge has ordered a defendant to log visitor activity and then hand over the information to the plaintiff.
"In general, a defendant is not required to create new records to hand over in discovery," von Lohmann said. "We shouldn't let Web site logging policies be set by litigation."
Many Web companies keep visitor logs, which can include Internet Protocol addresses, as well as other information. Some choose not to record this data, including EFF, von Lohmann said.

Hmm...

First The Pirate Bay and now TorrentSpy. Looks like these people have started getting serious.

Wow i didn't know about the pirate bay... they always acted like they were never going to get fined because of the laws there. Atleast that's what i read a long time ago.

Don't forget the infamous lokitorrent =\
Who knows where the thousands of dollars went...

omg.. I always use torrent spy.. like every frikn day for somethn or other.. Well, hell.. theres always something else.. and at least there are ip annonymizers and proxies that can cover your tracks

Really makes me suspicious when someone @ another site offered a torrent for DL the other day and when i suggested uploading to a file hosting site they wouldnt do it,they wanted ppl to dl the torrent!!! (Might be trying to grab IPs) I wouldnt doubt it!!!!

i use demonoid

edit] if anyone needs a invite code, let me know... they only open registration like one day a month.

excellent. No more excuses for pirates to continue their crimes in impunity.

These guys are service providers and therefore should fall under the same requirements as ISPs (and those ARE required to track users if there's a court order telling them to).

I can understand why companies would go after them. Afterall, money makes the world go round and torrents are stealing theirs.

But the crackers disagree with you. ;-)