A huge movement in the controversy of the whole illegal download issue came to the fore this week when recently closed site SpyTorrent was ordered to pay the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) an unbelievable $110million in damages – around £56million in UK cash.

SpyTorrent closed its doors apparently of its own accord on 24 March, with its parent company Valence Media and the owners filing for bankruptcy. Said MPAA chairman Dan Glickman of the ruling, ‘This substantial money judgement sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites… The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios’.

Using the legitimate BitTorrent file-sharing technology to exchange large files online without the need for a central server, SpyTorrent represents a big scalp for the soon-to-be much wealthier MPAA.

The US District judge in charge of the ruling said TorrentSpy had to pay $30,000 for each of the 3,699 infringements committed, making it one of the largest fines ever imposed for copyright theft.

A statement on the TorrentSpy site simply says, ‘The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests and links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile’.

With a $110million fine hanging over their heads, we reckon that could just be the understatement of the century.

http://news.bbc.co.uk

Share this article:

Del.icio.us this

AVR Glossary

Panasonic has beaten its competitors to the crunch and unveiled the first Freesat enabled TVs to the market. The 42in TH-42PZ81, 46in TH-46PZ81 and 50in TH-50PZ81 all feature incorporated SD and HD Freesat tuners delivering 80 TV and radio channels now, expected to increase to 200 by the end of 2008.

All three models are Full HD, delivering 1080p pics with 24p, 100Hz and the usual technology such as Panny’s V-Real 3 picture processing.

Primary connectivity is catered to by a trio of HDMI ports and Ethernet connector while an SD card slot opens up the multimedia options.

Panasonic is also stating a pretty remarkable 1,000,000:1 contrast ration on all models to create true blacks.

No word on pricing as yet, but the 42in and 46in models will be on sale here in June with the 50in range topper landing July.

www.panasonic.co.uk

Share this article:

Del.icio.us this

AVR Glossary