Did The MPAA Hire A Hacker To Break Into TorrentSpy?

I guess since the entertainment industry is building up their own police force while also getting the FBI to do its dirty work, it's no surprise that movie industry execs might believe they're above the law. TorrentSpy, the torrent search engine (not file sharing platform) was sued by the MPAA recently. As we noted at the time, TorrentSpy has wisely decided to fight back, as it appears they have a pretty strong case that they've done nothing illegal. However, TorrentSpy is now claiming that the MPAA is playing dirty -- and that they hired a hacker to break into TorrentSpy's corporate network to get whatever internal information possible for the sake of the lawsuit. The hacker ended up scoring financial information, internal emails and details about the company's technology. However, after all of this, the hacker felt bad and 'fessed up to TorrentSpy, who has now sued the MPAA for these actions. If this is proven true, it's a new low for the MPAA. Perhaps when you're used to treating your customers like criminals you start assuming that criminal activity is fine.

http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20060525/0143202.shtml