Popular torrent search engine TorrentSpy, mingled in a legal battle with Motion Picture Association of America, has taken the unilateral decision to stop us from accessing its site.

The reason? Privacy. The trial MPAA filed last year against TorrentSpy alleges that the latter is partially responsible for the copyright infringement its users commit against MPAA by allowing them to share pirated files.

A judge who sided with the MPAA ordered TorrentSpy to begin tracking down and storing IP addresses of its users, for later release to the MPAA. However, the judge agreed to allow the masking of the IPs for the time being. This comes in flagrant contradiction with TorrentSpy’s privacy protection policy, which clearly states that the company will “not sell, trade or rent your personal information to other companies. TorrentSpy.com will not collect any personal information about you except when you specifically and knowingly provide such information.”

As a consequence of this turn of events, TorrentSpy decided to forbid access for US customers to its search engine.

The motivation is described as follows on the company’s official blog:

“Torrentspy.com, an International search engine that provides links to torrent files, has decided to stop accepting visitors from the United States.

Torrentspy's servers are located in the Netherlands and is subject to International privacy laws including those in the European Union.

Torrentspy.com has a strong privacy policy protecting site users against the linking of personal identifying information to searches absent user consent.

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.”

Ira Rothken, attorney for TorrentSpy, underlined the fact that this will not influence the course of the appeal planned for this fall.

"It's axiomatic that when you have a privacy policy which promises in essence that a search engine is not going to tie personally identified information to the searches that you do that you have the ability to honor it and that a court cannot usurp that promise, especially when users do not get proper notice and an opportunity to get heard," Rothken told Wired News. "We believe that the privacy rights of users in this context are substantially more important than issues related to secondary and possibly tertiary copyright infringement."

In a later interview with Cnet.com, Rothken added:

"This is a wake-up call to citizens and Internet users that their privacy isn't protected as well as they might have thought. Google, Yahoo and other search engines should be very concerned. One day these attacks on privacy will likely affect them."