Microsoft Sues BitTorrent Tracker

from the jumping-into-the-game dept

Wed, Jan 27th 2010 7:10pm — Mike Masnick

After already targeting a bunch of users of a popular Lithuanian BitTorrent tracker, Microsoft has apparently now tried suing the owner of the torrent tracker itself, though the guy claims he stopped running it at the end of last year. But, again, it seems backwards to sue the operator of a tracker, when that tracker does not host or transmit any copyrighted material itself. On top of that, Microsoft has sued for $43 million, when Lithuanian law apparently limits the potential damages in this case to $53,000. Either way, due to the case, the (previous?) owner of the site has had his assets frozen -- which seems pretty extreme based on just an accusation, rather than a conviction.

Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.

Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.

While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.

–The Techdirt Team

Filed Under: bittorrent, lawsuit, lithuania, tracker
Companies: microsoft

14 Comments

If you liked this post, you may also be interested in...

Reader Comments

Subscribe: RSS

View by: Time | Thread

Richard Corsale (profile), 27 Jan 2010 @ 7:52pm

Speeking of accusation based presumption of guilt
I just saw the State of the union address.. He talks of human rights, while just today the administration pushed the free nations of the world to convict file-sharers based solely on accusations. Today in Guadalajara the ACTA treaty's enforcement negotiations took place. Guilt by accusation is a human rights violation last time I checked. He talks of stopping lobbies from corrupting senators.. The fortune 100 companies are the ones that crafted this treaty. He talks of transparency, HE IS the one that hid this treaty from the people calling it a "National Security" secret. The only people that have seen it, are the intellectual property lobbies who wrote it, and the trade negotiators of these foreign nations who we're threating with embargo if they don't betray their Citizens on behalf of our corporate elite.

This is too painful to watch..
[ link to this | view in thread ]
transmaster (profile), 27 Jan 2010 @ 8:56pm

Vote the Bum Out
President Jimmy Carter is pissed. The only legacy he has is being known as United States worst President. With Pope Obama Scumbag-us The Only that distinction is rapidly going by the wayside. One nice thing though, he is going out in one term and he is going to take the present leadership in the House and Senate with him.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Spaceman Spiff (profile), 27 Jan 2010 @ 9:03pm

Talking about MicroSludge, not Obama
Let's keep on topic. Yes, there is a lot to be pissed off about B.Obama, but there is just as much to be pissed off about Microsoft. How many whacks upside the head is it going to take before they understand that they don't own the world? I think it's time to give them another whack...
[ link to this | view in thread ]
:), 27 Jan 2010 @ 9:09pm

I don't have that problem.
I don't use proprietary software.
Now owners of torrent sites should all use LLC(aka plc, ltd., ltda) to limit their exposure to such things.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Zee (profile), 27 Jan 2010 @ 9:27pm

They can sue all they want
But they will or no one for that matter can stop Torrent sites or Trackers from appearing.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 27 Jan 2010 @ 9:35pm

Shakespeare had it right
Again, they are trying to make criminal cases out of civil cases. We should have listened to the great bard in his tome Henry V - 'The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers'.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Pjerky, 27 Jan 2010 @ 10:08pm

Re: Talking about MicroSludge, not Obama
Yeah, but if you think about it with Microsoft we can just choose to not use their products. But with the U.S. Government and our President we can only choose to put someone else in there once every 4 years. And the President can do a lot more damage. I just wish we can get some honest politicians in the White House that care about all facets effecting American citizens.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
PaulT (profile), 28 Jan 2010 @ 12:46am

Re: Re: Talking about MicroSludge, not Obama
"Yeah, but if you think about it with Microsoft we can just choose to not use their products"

If only it were that simple... There's many reasons why MS have maintained a monopoly despite having what most people agree are inferior products. Especially if you operate in business, you don't really have much of a choice on the desktop.

"But with the U.S. Government and our President we can only choose to put someone else in there once every 4 years."

So... what's your solution? Would you rather have a system where the president is essentially campaigning the whole time during his office? I can guarantee that little would get done, and nothing controversial would even get suggested if a term of less than 4 years was in place.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Getefix, 28 Jan 2010 @ 1:57am

Re: Re: Re: Talking about MicroSludge, not Obama
It is obvious that the Great Experiment has failed. America needs to change to a parliamentary system of government. That way the American Pirate Party can swing enough clout to make a difference in copyright law. But I suspect Americans would rather remain peons of a corporate oligarchy than admit they failed to make their own system work.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Jan 2010 @ 6:09am

full of shit.
i could easily accept your argument if it wasn't full of shit.

there are no other applications named "microsoft office". if torrent network operators had a shred of credibility, they'd do a few searches to gather up all the hashes of these OBVIOUSLY pirated copies, and then ban the naming of anything with "microsoft office" or similar, and ban the upload of torrents for anything with those hashes. shit, they could even just wait until they received a takedown notice. it's REALLY simple, and would eliminate 99% of public tracker piracy in a matter of minutes. but the ops don't want to do that because their traffic would look like mininova's http://www.quantcast.com/mininova.org (note: that plummet is when mininova started filtering).

when your service gets overrun by unlawful uses, and the cost for you to stop the unlawfulness is virtually nothing (seriously, i could code the hash/name filter in an under an hour), there's nothing wrong with making you stop the unlawfulness.

this is not like filtering the internet at large (which has been shown to be ineffective and politically abused time and time again). mininova is now the second instance where a major p2p network tried filtering and died from abandonment (napster was the first). sure, there are third party plugins that allow some sort of transposition in names of uploads, but most people won't go that far. they sure didn't on napster.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Noob Buster, 28 Jan 2010 @ 7:00am

Full of something...
there are no other applications named "microsoft office".
Let's see... I'll do a quick search on the internet...
- Sun ODF Plugin for Microsoft Office
- OpenOffice.orgDownload this white paper to get started on a smooth migration from Microsoft Office.
- Microsoft Office Add-in | YouSendIt
- Analyze and Convert Microsoft® Office Documents to HTML ... The Accessible Wizard for Microsoft Office 2007
- Avery Wizard for Microsoft Word | Avery Wizard Download
- Microsoft Office XP Tutorials
All of those have Microsoft Office in the description... possible in the title. And none are from Microsoft.
And that was 3 seconds of searching
It's not that easy to do a search and trash. Not only that, but in other coutries, where they don't even speak english... it could be translated differently, or they may simply have no interest in learning English.
Get a brain... then use it.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
Anonymous Coward, 28 Jan 2010 @ 8:07am

Re: full of shit.
And then people name their files "Microsoft Offce" or "MSFT Office" or "Office from MS" or "Not-Apple Office" or "Bill's Office" or "Office" or "MS Document Editing Software" or...

You're silly.
[ link to this | view in thread ]
BearGriz72 (profile), 28 Jan 2010 @ 3:27pm

Re: full of shit.
The only one full of it is you
[ link to this | view in thread ]
DrKeithCurrie, 30 Jan 2010 @ 5:34am

Microsoft office XP
I am using Microsoft Office XP still now. No problem with it, It is working just good. Microsoft offering a nice discount but I will be waiting for a lower price or free. May be I will upgrade.
[ link to this | view in thread ]