A lawsuit in which activists accused the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) of seeking SOPA-like powers has ended without resolving much of anything.

Whoever was behind the accused piracy website MovieTube seems to have disappeared. MovieTube didn't respond to the complaint, and it blew off a scheduled August 18 hearing. Yesterday, US District Judge Paul Crotty entered a default judgment (PDF) and injunction handing over the MovieTube site to the MPAA. Crotty also ordered the site owners, if they're ever found, to pay a $10.5 million penalty for willful copyright infringement (or $75,000 per infringed work).

MovieTube was shuttered shortly after the complaint (PDF) was filed, which resulted in the MPAA dropping its request for a controversial preliminary injunction. MPAA lawyers asked for a broad order that would have affected not just MovieTube but loads of intermediary service providers.

The MPAA sought an order banning "search-based online advertising services (such as through paid inclusion, paid search results, sponsored search results, sponsored links, and Internet keyword advertising), domain name registration privacy protection services, providers of social media services (e.g., Facebook and Twitter) and user-generated and online content services (e.g., YouTube, Flickr and Tumblr)" from providing any services to MovieTube. Banks, advertisers, and payment processors would have been barred as well.

That remedy—a lightning-fast court-ordered shutdown that would affect all services connected to an alleged piracy website—is essentially what the entertainment industry sought but failed to get during the debate over the Stop Online Piracy Act.

The MPAA's efforts were alarming enough to Internet companies that Google, Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, and Yahoo teamed up to file an amicus brief (PDF) asking the judge in the case to not grant the MPAA the relief it sought.

However, once MovieTube shut down, the MPAA withdrew its request for the broad preliminary court order—perhaps seeing that it was headed toward a rapid default judgment that would give it control of the infringing sites.

In the end, the MovieTube saga isn't so much about what that site actually did; rather it's a preview of a legal battle that will likely be fought out in a future case. The two-bit piracy site, which openly stated on one of its Facebook pages that it did "not need to respect US laws," isn't going to end up paying millions to the MPAA or anyone else. The MPAA believes current law gives it the right to keep asking for a "back door" to SOPA-like remedies, but the opposition from Internet companies will be vigorous.