Nine Movie Sites Busted in Pirating Crackdown

[iggs111]

by Ethan Smith and David Benoit
Thursday, July 1, 2010
Provided by The Wall Street Journal



In an ongoing fight against intellectual piracy, federal authorities seized the domain names of nine websites accused of letting users watch on-demand versions of first-run movies.


Referring to the sites as "among the most popular" websites for distributing illegal copies of movies, the government highlighted copies of films currently in theaters, such as "Toy Story 3" and "The A-Team," for evidence to obtain the warrant.

The nine sites had registered their domain names via U.S.-based registration services, allowing authorities to take control of their site addresses. Some were run on computers based in the U.S.—in Colorado, Florida and Illinois. But others used computers based in Germany, the Netherlands, the U.K. and the Czech Republic.

At a Wednesday news conference in Burbank, Calif., the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency said authorities had seized some assets, funds and equipment, and had executed four search warrants at U.S. residences. They declined to offer further specifics or say whether they had any arrests.

ICE Assistant Secretary John Morton acknowledged that some of the foreign-based websites could reappear at different addresses.

Mr. Morton said at the news conference that on June 15 alone, 37,000 people had watched "Sex and the City 2" on one of the sites, TVShack.net.

The other sites include Movies-Links.tv, Filespump.com, ZML.com, Now-Movies.com, ThePirateCity.org, PlanetMoviez.com, NinjaVideo.net and NinjaThis.net.

Attempts to contact the websites weren't immediately successful.

Unlike most other antipirating efforts, the focus in this crackdown wasn't on downloads. Rather, many of the sites let users "stream" movies free, and supported themselves by selling advertising. While that's a similar model to legitimate video-watching sites, such as Hulu.com, the sites targeted by the enforcement action had no licenses to show the movies, and didn't pay the studios that created them.

The government pointed to TVShack.net's attempt to cool off users upset with slow loading times for the movies:

"[P]lease keep in mind that you're watching videos for free as opposed to spending over 20 dollars at the [movie] theater or purchasing a show," an affidavit quoted TVShack as saying. "This should help you put things in perspective."

Visitors to the web pages will be redirected to a page that notifies them the sites have been seized by the government.

Mr. Morton and several movie-studio executives sought to portray online piracy as harmful to America's economic interests, saying that Hollywood employs 2.5 million Americans in 50 states.

"Counterfeiting and piracy hurt American workers, pure and simple," Mr. Morton said.

"These are good, middle-class jobs," added Thom Davis, a vice president of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees, a movie-industry workers' union.

Movie studios, artists and media companies have long battled illegal file-sharing and piracy sites with a variety of legal tactics over the years.

Most recently, the producers of "The Hurt Locker" sued 5,000 people who downloaded the Oscar winning war movie from BitTorrent networks.

Asked whether ICE would similarly go after individuals, Mr. Morton said: "Right now our focus is on the sites themselves."

Mr. Morton acknowledged that when it comes to online distribution technologies like BitTorrent that do not store copies of media centrally, authorities may have a difficult time taking steps like the ones announced Wednesday. "It's a challenge," he said. "There's a level of sophistication government can't always match."

"I don't think we've stopped Internet piracy in a day," Mr. Morton said. "But this is going to be a sustained effort."

Wednesday's announcement was part of a broader effort to crack down on other forms of piracy and counterfeiting, such as pharmaceuticals. The initiative is being run by the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, an interagency task force spearheaded by ICE and including representatives of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Food and Drug Administration and six others.

[Windy City Irish]

thanks skippy

[guzzi]

...

[iggs111]

blow me. This is big news for people like me and rev you jagoff ;)

[revnecro1273]

Originally Posted by iggs111

blow me. This is big news for people like me and rev you jagoff ;)

indeed...shit blows..

[QuadzillaXXX]

movies are pumping out record profits and are still going to try and blame websites for the low numbers of others......make a decent product and people will go

[ParrotHead]

Damn, this sucks. No one wants to spend ****ing 20 dollars to go watch a movie in a theater filed with douchebags. And as if actors and actresses dont have enough money, WTF

[revnecro1273]

Originally Posted by QuadzillaXXX

movies are pumping out record profits and are still going to try and blame websites for the low numbers of others......make a decent product and people will go

record profits because they jack up the prices of tickets...will never go to a theatre again

[Bisket]

never even heard of these sites

[ParrotHead]

Originally Posted by Bisket23

never even heard of these sites

Get with the times (JK)