A federal judge decided that the American administrators of the Amsterdam, Netherlands-based TorrentSpy Web-site are guilty of destroying evidence in a piracy suit filed by the MPAA.

TorrentSpy is one of the most popular torrent trackers on the Web, allowing people to find, share and download files, most of them protected by copyright.

The suit against the site was filed back in 2006 by Viacom’s Paramount and other studios. The defendants are accused of illegally allowing users to share and download large files (like movies, music or games), with the help of a software called BitTorrent.

U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper in Los Angeles ruled that Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker and Wes Parker, US citizens administrating TorrentSpy, will be held liable for infringement because they have deleted important case files and gave false statements.

The court papers released on December 13 stated that the defendants "engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in an effort to hide evidence of such destruction." Judge Cooper also added that “proper sanctions” are needed in this case of “extraordinary circumstances."

"Defendants' conduct during discovery in this case has been obstreperous," the court concluded.

Among the felonies TorrentSpy administrators are accused of are: the concealing of IP addresses of site users; the modification or deletion of directory headings naming copyrighted titles and forum posts that explained how to find specific copyrighted works; withholding the names and addresses of forum moderators.

According to John Malcolm, executive vice president and director of worldwide antipiracy operations for the Motion Picture Association of America, the ruling is "significant victory for the major Hollywood studios."

TorrentSpy is the second major victim of a piracy-related lawsuit. The first one was demonoid.com, a similar Web-site took down by CRIA (Canadian Record Industry Association). However, unlike Demonoid, TorrentSpy will continue to exist and "serve" international clients, because any ruling in the US will not affect the servers from Netherlands.