A federal judge ordered peer-to-peer file swapping site LokiTorrent.com to close and give attorneys for the film industry access to full server logs .
LokiTorrent was also ordered to pay almost $1 million in a settlement fee.
The Motion Picture Association of America wasted no time in supplanting LokiTorrent.com's site with a vivid warning at the site's home page: "There are Websites that provide legal downloads. This is not one of them," the message began in bold red print, beneath images of a takeoff on the MPAA rating system label ("I – Illegal Downloading/Inappropriate for All Ages") and a hand clicking a mouse with the legend, "You Can Click, But You Can't Hide."
"This Website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures," the MPAA message continues. "The illegal downloading of motion pictures robs thousands of honest, hard-working people of their livelihood, and stifles creativity. Illegally downloading movies from sites such as these without proper authorization violates the law, is theft, and is not anonymous. Stealing movies leaves a trail. The only way not to get caught is to stop."
The LokiTorrent.com closure came almost two months after another P2P site using the BitTorrent system, Supernova.org, closed down permanently. "We are very sorry for this," said a statement on Supernova.org in mid-December, "but there was no other way, we have tried everything." Supernova became the fourth BitTorrent-connected site to close at that time, following the closings of N4p.com, Torrentbits.org, and Phoenix-torrents.com.
Until the movie industry began hunting down BitTorrent usage last fall, BitTorrent was believed to be responsible for more data traffic in cyberspace than any other single application, based on research performed by CacheLogic.
LokiTorrent had formerly been one of the prime spots for people looking for online movies. The site may have gotten into the MPAA's crosshairs more acutely because, when the campaign against BitTorrent began in earnest, LokiTorrent all but dared the MPAA to continue its accelerating litigation campaign against P2P movie downloading, even asking visitors to contribute to its legal campaign and raising over $30,000 in that regard.
But LokiTorrent is now history, for all intent and purpose – and the MPAA isn't shying away from litigation based on what is found in the LokiTorrent server logs. "This should give us information about LokiTorrent visitors who were involved in flagrant piracy of filmed entertainment," MPAA director of world piracy operations John Malcom said in a statement. "We are going to look at all the information... and decide what the appropriate action is to take."
In early December, the appropriate action regarding BitTorrent and other P2P servers was the MPAA pressing for and getting eight arrests and eleven server seizures in the Netherlands, Finland, and France.
Last month, the MPAA filed new lawsuits against online movie swappers but didn't say exactly how many were being sued in that round.
