Judge orders LokiTorrent.com to close, release logs

In a victory for the Motion Picture Association of America, a US District Court judge in Texas has shut down BitTorrent site LokiTorrent.com and orded them to turn over their server logs to the MPAA's attorneys. As of now, visitors to the site are greeted with a friendly message from the MPAA. (Whether the message current LokiTorrent.com is part of the court order or an attempt on the part of the site's owner to curry favor with the MPAA is unclear.)

This website has been permanently shut down by court order because it facilitates the illegal downloading of copyrighted motion pictures. 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.

Ah yes, the old identifying trail. Since they now have the server logs, the MPAA plans to pore through them looking for identifying information that could lead to lawsuits against users of the site. A spokesperson for the MPAA said that such actions against high-volume users of the torrent site are likely, assuming they can be identified via IP addresses.