Interesting read. Legally, since the hacking laws don’t have anything about vicarious liability, I think the MPAA is safe. Unless BitTorrent can find some smoking gun email showing that BitTorrent was fully away this guy was illegally hacking in to get the information they haven’t done anything criminal. They simply paid for information from someone who contacted them.
And I don’t blame the MPAA for fighting piracy. Sure, techie geeks are always going to be a step ahead, but you have to fight the battle to keep the piracy in the hands of techies. The reason Napster became such a problem was it was so idiot proof. With just a minimum of computer knowledge you could find, download and install the program and get free music. No filters to filter out dummy versions, no signing up, no unzipping multi-part rars. Just search, click, free music.