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Judge Florence-Marie Cooper ruled in a California courtroom that the defendants, Justin Bunnell, Forrest Parker, Wes Parker and Valence Media, had destroyed server logs, user IP addresses and other information that they had been ordered to keep.

"They have engaged in widespread and systematic efforts to destroy evidence and have provided false testimony under oath in an effort to hide evidence of such destruction,"

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Judge Cooper writes in her decision.

The defendants' lawyer, Ira Rothken, says that his clients had been concerned with protecting users' privacy.

"One person's willful destruction of evidence is another person's willful attempt to comply with customer privacy policies," he says.

TorrentSpy will appeal and Rothken says that if that fails, the ruling could expose private users' information in any number of civil lawsuits.

"This doesn't apply only to TorrentSpy, but to anyone who operates a website," he says.

The Motion Pictures Association of America, the movie industry trade group that brought the lawsuit, welcomed the ruling. "The sole purpose of TorrentSpy and sites like it is to facilitate and promote the unlawful dissemination of copyrighted content. TorrentSpy is a one-stop shop for copyright infringement," says John Malcolm, executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, in a statement.

Damages will be set at a later hearing.