• Wired, Thursday, May 8, 2008 10:30 AM

In one of the largest fines in copyright history, a federal judge slapped the shuttered TorrentSpy file-sharing service with a $111 million penalty for infringing on thousands of copyrighted works. The case, which was brought by the Motion Picture Association of America, was bolstered when the MPAA allegedly paid a hacker $15,000 for internal TorrentSpy e-mails and correspondence.

The MPAA sued the site last year because it allowed users to purloin copyrighted movies and other material. As a result, Torrentspy shut down its service in March 2008. "This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites," says MPAA Chairman Dan Glickman.

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