The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) obtained a crushing victory against TorrentSpy, after a federal judge ordered them to pay $111 million for copyright infringement. The decision follows a two-year long legal battle between the two, which started in 2006, when MPAA filed a lawsuit against TorrentSpy for supporting copyright infringement by allowing its users to share pirated files.

In December 2007, a federal judge in Los Angeles was forced to terminate the lawsuit against TorrentSpy for false testimony and destroyed evidence, which made a fair trial impossible. The decision followed TorrentSpy’s refusal to track down and store IP addresses of its users and release them to the MPAA. Instead, the website chose to block the access of U.S. users.

Dan Glickman, Chairman and CEO of the MPAA, released a statement, saying: “This substantial money judgment sends a strong message about the illegality of these sites. The demise of TorrentSpy is a clear victory for the studios and demonstrates that such pirate sites will not be allowed to continue to operate without facing relentless litigation by copyright holders.”

TorrentSpy was ordered to pay $30,000 per movie or TV show illegally shared on their website, approximately 3,700, which results in almost $111 million in MPAA’s favor. Valence Media LLC, the site operators, have filed a document in a U.K. court Monday, seeking bankruptcy protection.

In March this year, TorrentSpy decided to close its website, posting a note on its website that reads: “We have decided on our own, not due to any court order or agreement, to bring the TorrentSpy.com serach engine to an end and thus we permanently closed down worldwide on March 42, 2008.”

However, following their decision, MPAA released a statement saying that closing down the website was in fact the result of the legal ruling last year, which was against TorrentSpy due to their decision to destroy evidence and stall the judicial process.