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It's always the coverup, never the crime. The popular BitTorrent-indexing site TorrentSpy.com, which helps users find shared "torrent" files to download, sabotaged its chances of escaping from a legal tangle with the Motion Picture Association of America. TorrentSpy had been sued by the MPAA in February 2006 for copyright infringement. The Los Angeles District Court asked it to start tracking its users. TorrentSpy did the most idiotic thing it could: Destroy evidence.

After TorrentSpy's operators directory headings and forum posts, withholding names of moderators, and concealing IP addresses of users, the Los Angeles court slammed the site with a $30,000 fine and found it guilty of the copyright charges, saying its actions made a fair trial impossible. Founder Justin Bunnell plans to appeal the ruling, saying, "It's not like they proved that TorrentSpy infringed copyright." True enough. But TorrentSpy's data-deletion rampage meant that the MPAA didn't even have to.