TorrentSpy, the largest torrent collectors on the net, had to block all United States visitors from accessing their website from August 27th 2007. The reason behind TorrentSpy’s this action might be their ongoing legal battle with MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America).

This is not the first time a P2P(peer-2-peer) or IP2IP network is accused of doing illegal activities. Kazza, Warez and many other online file sharing communities faced legal charge for distributing illegal files before.

A recent court order demanded TorrentSpy to hand over all the saved users information from their RAM(Random Access Memory) to MPAA so that MPAA can track these individuals and take legal action against them. But instead of handing over the database, TorrentSpy blocked all the search requests from US visitors.

Since almost 15% of the TorrentSpy visitors are from US (8% from Check Republic, 5% from UK and almost ~4% from Canada, Philippines and Hungary), many believe that TorrentSpy will loose big chunk of their revenue for this new policy.

TorrentSpy is operated by Share Stream Limited and their web server is located in Netherlands. As a result, it was easier for TorrentSpy to fight against US law (DMCA). On the other hand they also admitted that they do not keep any of their users information. More or less TorrentSpy is expecting for help from European Union and International Privacy Law now.

In an official announcement in TorrentSpy blog, they stated:

Torrentspy’s decision to stop accepting US visitors was NOT compelled by any Court rather it arises out of an uncertain legal climate in the United States regarding user privacy and the apparent tension between US and European Union Internet privacy laws.

Related News: TorrentSpy Blocks Searches From US Visitors