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We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring
the Torrentspy.com search engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down
worldwide on March 24, 2008.

The legal climate in the USA for copyright, privacy of search requests, and
links to torrent files in search results is simply too hostile. We spent the
last two years, and hundreds of thousands of dollars, defending the rights of
our users and ourselves.

Ultimately the Court demanded actions that in our view were inconsistent with
our privacy policy, traditional court rules, and International law; therefore,
we now feel compelled to provide the ultimate method of privacy protection for
our users - permanent shutdown.

By the end of 2006 TorrentSpy was more popular than any other BitTorrent site, but this changed quickly in August 2007, when a federal judge ordered TorrentSpy to log all user data. The judge ruled that TorrentSpy had to monitor its users in order to create detailed logs of their activities, and hand these over to the MPAA.

In a response to this decision - and to ensure the privacy of their users - TorrentSpy decided that it was best to block access to all users from the US. This led to a huge decrease in traffic and revenue.

This was not enough for the MPAA, who argued that TorrentSpy had ignored the court decision. The legal battle continued, and this eventually led to a preventative closure of the site by Justin, to protect the privacy of its users.