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MPAA wins MovieTube shutdown

November 25, 2015

By Colin Mann

A Federal Court judge in New York has granted a permanent injunction and final judgment in the Motion Picture Association of America member companies’ lawsuit against the operators of the MovieTube ring of websites, shutting down the sites, awarding the plaintiffs $10.5 million in damages and transferring the domains to the plaintiffs.

“The MPAA’s member companies filed a civil suit in July against the operators of a ring of websites called MovieTube whose explicit purpose was to distribute stolen copies of the latest motion pictures and television shows without compensating the people who worked so hard to make them,” advised Dean Marks, Executive Vice President, Deputy General Counsel and Chief, Global Content Protection of the MPAA. “Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, the sites were taken down by their operators. By shutting down these illegal commercial enterprises we are protecting not only our members’ creative work and the hundreds of innovative, legal digital distribution platforms, but also the millions of people whose jobs depend on a vibrant motion picture and television industry. This court order will help ensure the sites stay down and are not transferred to others for the purposes of continuing a piracy operation on a massive scale.”

Categories: Articles, Content, Piracy, Rights