The hacking saga began in the spring of 2005, when Rob Anderson -- a former ad-salesman for a BA Ventures , an ad selling company then run by TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell -- had a falling out with Bunnell. Anderson then used the IP address from a Bunnell email and hacked into the mail server by guessing the password.

He then set the system to automatically forward a copy of all incoming and outgoing messages to a Gmail account. Then in June 2005, Anderson wrote the MPAA, offering to sell emails and the MPAA bought 34 pages of e-mails for 34 dollars and signed a contract saying that he got the e-mails legally.

Apparently its perfectly legal in California to hack into someone's email system, steal their email, and resell it! It is hard for me to understand how our system can reach such obviously incorrect conclusions with a straight face... Did it not occur to this judge that a violation of law might have occurred when the defendant's consultant hacked into the mail server? Was she born yesterday, or was everyone hoping that no one other than the plaintiff would notice? Why does the MPAA expect to be taken seriously as a moral authority in regard to copyright law when they engage in this kind of crooked behavior?

The hacking saga began in the spring of 2005, when Rob Anderson -- a former ad-salesman for a BA Ventures , an ad selling company then run by TorrentSpy founder Justin Bunnell -- had a falling out with Bunnell. Anderson then used the IP address from a Bunnell email and hacked into the mail server by guessing the password.

He then set the system to automatically forward a copy of all incoming and outgoing messages to a Gmail account. Then in June 2005, Anderson wrote the MPAA, offering to sell emails and the MPAA bought 34 pages of e-mails for 34 dollars and signed a contract saying that he got the e-mails legally.

Apparently its perfectly legal in California to hack into someone's email system, steal their email, and resell it! It is hard for me to understand how our system can reach such obviously incorrect conclusions with a straight face... Did it not occur to this judge that a violation of law might have occurred when the defendant's consultant hacked into the mail server? Was she born yesterday, or was everyone hoping that no one other than the plaintiff would notice? Why does the MPAA expect to be taken seriously as a moral authority in regard to copyright law when they engage in this kind of crooked behavior?

[This really is an astonishing result. Doesn't even make sense on it's face. Assholes. -k]