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Movie Companies Sue Popcorn Time, VPN, and 'Hosting' Provider in Piracy LawsuitErnesto Van der Sar, 08 Mar 09:48 PM Hawaiian attorney Kerry Culpeppe

Movie Companies Sue Popcorn Time, VPN, and 'Hosting' Provider in Piracy Lawsuit Ernesto Van der Sar, 08 Mar 09:48 PM Hawaiian attorney Kerry Culpepper has built quite a track record in recent years, putting pressure on various pirate sites and services. The biggest score came a little over a year ago when he convinced the operator of YTS, one of the largest torrent sites, to settle with several movie companies for more than a million dollars in damages. The echoes of those settlements are still heard in current lawsuits. As part of the agreement the operator of YTS shared information from the site's database with the movie companies, which provided fuel for many follow-up cases. Atypical Lawsuits The tactics of Culpepper and his clients, which include the makers of "Angel Has Fallen," "Rambo V: Last Blood," and "The Hitman's Bodyguard", are quite atypical. Major Hollywood studios shy away from lawsuits against the general public and rarely sue pirate services. That's not the case for these smaller independent studios, which are happy to put pressure on apps, sites, and even third-party services which they believe play a role in the piracy ecosystem. For example, phone store Victra was sued more than once, Internet backbone provider Hurricane Electric was taken to court, and VPN provider LiquidVPN was targeted for alleged facilition of piracy. Popcorn Time, VPN, and 'Hosting' Provider Yesterday, another lawsuit appeared on our radar. In a complaint filed at a federal court in Virginia Culpepper, together with attorney Timothy Hyland, accuse PopcornTime.app, several of its users, VPN.ht (Wicked Technology), and hosting service Voxility of massive copyright infringement. The plaintiffs include familiar movie companies such as Fallen Productions, Millennium Funding, and Voltage Holdings, who argue that the defendants all play a role in distributing pirated copies of their films. "Massive piracy of these motion pictures on the Internet via peer to peer ('P2P') networks by customers of Internet Service providers ('ISPs') and data centers such as Voxility and Wicked and the willful failure of the ISPs to deal with this issue despite clear notice of it have hindered this opportunity," the complaint reads. Seeing the PopcornTime.app software and several pirating users as defendants is not a major surprise. The app has often been described as a piracy tool, even by the US Government, and the users were simply caught pirating through their IP-addresses. In this case, these IP-addresses were linked to a VPN. This often makes the actual pirates impossible to identify, which is why the movie companies are going after VPN.ht and its hosting partner Voxility. Voxility's Role Voxility LLC is incorporated in the US and allegedly housed servers that were used by the VPN. While it's a neutral intermediary, the movie companies argue that the company should have taken action when it received multiple takedown notices about infringing activity that took place over its network. "Voxility continued to provide service to Wicked despite knowledge from at least the Notices that their customer Wicked was using the service to encourage Wicked customers to pirate copyright protected Works including Plaintiffs' exactly as promoted, encouraged and instructed by Wicked," the complaint reads. Apart from sending takedown notices, the movie company attorneys repeatedly contacted Voxility to point out the infringing activities. One of the letters explicitly stated that Wicked promoted its VPN to be used in combination with Popcorn Time. The hosting provider eventually agreed to terminate the account of VPN.ht. However, it took several months before that actually happened, the complaint alleges. VPN.ht's Involvement Voxility itself doesn't promote the use of Popcorn Time but the movie companies accuse Hong Kong-based VPN.ht owner Wicked Technology of encouraging its subscribers to use the app. "Wicked actively promotes its VPN service as a tool to use the notorious movie piracy application Popcorn Time," the complaint reads, adding that the company "actively promotes its VPN service for the purpose of movie piracy, including of infringing Plaintiffs' Works." The complaint lists various screenshots where VPN.ht mentions Popcorn Time, adding that a VPN helps "to avoid getting in trouble." These comments were not limited to Popcorn Time. The service also has a landing page for users of the torrent site YTS, a popular source for pirated movies. The movie companies note that based on this "encouragement" the users of VPN.ht installed piracy apps or visited torrent sites to download and share pirated films. The complaint doesn't specify how IP-addresses were linked to actual Popcorn Time or YTS users. Needless to say, these are serious allegations that have to be proven in court. Holding online service providers liable is far from straightforward and jurisdiction issues may arise as well. Pressure Tool and Blocking Demands That said, lawsuits are the ultimate pressure tool and recent history has shown that these movie companies are not averse to settling matters. As mentioned earlier, they settled with torrent site YTS, phone company Victra, and Hurricane Electric resolved matters behind closed doors too. With regard to VPN.ht, the movie companies also hope to compel the company to identify the operator of PopcornTime.app, possibly through payments that were made between both parties. All in all, the allegations amount to direct and contributory copyright infringement claims against Wicked, PopcornTime, and its users. Voxility is accused of contributory copyright infringement due to its alleged 'failure' to take action. When we look at the demands for damages and relief, there are striking similarities with the recently filed case against LiquidVPN. In addition to halting any infringing activity, Wicked and Voxility also face demands to make it impossible for pirate sites to be accessed through their networks. In addition, the companies should block ports 6881-6889 on all servers, as these are commonly used for BitTorrent traffic. These are unprecedented demands, to say the least, so we'll keep a close eye on the lawsuit going forward. — A copy of the complaint filed at US District Court for the Eastern District of Virgnia is available here (pdf) From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. Operators of Major Pirate Sites Committed No Crimes, Court Rules Andy Maxwell, 08 Mar 12:27 PM Fourteen years ago, SeriesYonkis began its journey to becoming one of the most popular 'pirate' sites in mainland Europe, offering links to movies and TV shows to the public. Focusing on content in Spanish, it developed a strong local audience, plus others further afield. With this popularity came unwanted attention. In addition to action from local anti-piracy groups, criticism mounted directly from the US after the MPAA reported SeriesYonkis – which had grown from strength to strength – to the United States Trade Representative. In 2014, this elevated SeriesYonkis to 'notorious market' status. Operators of SeriesYonkis & Sister Sites On Trial After unrelenting legal pressure by several major Hollywood studios and their local proxies (including industry group EGEDA and the Spanish Anti-Piracy Federation), four men went on trial in April 2019 for their parts in the sites SeriesYonkis, PeliculasYonkis and VideosYonkis (Series, Film, and Video Junkies). Founder and original owner Alberto García and the sites' subsequent owners Alexis Hoepfner, Jordi Tamargo and David Martínez, faced damages claims in excess of 550 million euros. Perhaps more significantly, there were calls from Hollywood for prison sentences of up to fours each, with the local prosecutor settling on two years. Original Verdict: Not Guilty After months of deliberation, Judge Isabel María Carrillo Sáez of Murcia's Criminal Court number 4 rejected Hollywood's calls for the men to be imprisoned for facilitating copyright infringement, ruling that their actions were not a crime when they took place. "There was no explicit definition of these behaviors before. It was criminalized by the legislator in 2015," the verdict explained, noting that the profits made by the defendants did not warrant a criminal conviction. Spain updated its copyright law in 2015 but the sites in question had already stopped linking to pirated content following an agreement with local anti-piracy group FAP. Undeterred, the movie companies and Public Prosecutor's Office said they would launch an appeal. Appeal Verdict: Not Guilty The original trial established several key facts. Under the company Poulsen SL, Alberto García owned SeriesYonkis and PeliculasYonkis and operated them for two years. He then sold them for more than half a million euros to a company called Burn Media, which was operated by Alexis Hoepfner, Jordi Tamargo and David Martínez. There was no evidence that any of the defendants uploaded any movies or TV shows themselves. Users of the sites reportedly providing links to pirated content that was hosted elsewhere. However, due to the lack of clarity over the mere provision of links and the reform of Spain's copyright law that took place after the alleged offenses took place, the Court found that no crimes had been committed by the defendants. El País reports that lawyer Cristóbal Martell, who defended Jordi Tamargo, successfully argued that criminal laws cannot be applied retroactively if they negatively affect the accused. He also convinced the Court that the accused did not know that their activities were illegal, something described as a "prohibition error". As a result, the appeal – filed by the Public Prosecutor's Office, Warner Bros, Paramount Pictures, Universal Studios and EGEDA – has now been rejected by the Murcia Provincial Court, with the panel of three magistrates ratifying the decision made by the Murcia Criminal Court in 2019. "There is no evidence that [the defendants] were aware of the illicit origin of the information to which they referred or that it harmed any right. There is no evidence in the case that any of the defendants knew the illegality of the activity carried out by the sites," the decision reads, as cited by elDiario. The defendants had claimed that they had no control over the content linked via their now-defunct sites, since links were uploaded by users. This version of events was accepted by the Court, which noted that users were also aware that third-party platforms actually hosted the content. "The user of the link who wanted to access the work selected by him from these web pages was aware of the redirection and that the download or streaming was done on a web page different from the one that contained the link," the decision reads. Defense lawyer Carlos Sánchez Almeida says that by upholding the decision handed down in 2019, the Court reached the right conclusion under EU law. "You cannot judge the past with the eyes of the present, nor the present with the eyes of the past," Almeida says. "We have won the case thanks to the European jurisprudence of the European Court of Human Rights and the doctrine of the Constitutional Court on the impossibility of sentencing in the second instance without repeating the trial." While the decision is reported as final, at least in theory the ruling of the Provincial Court can be appealed to the Constitutional Court. However, according to elDiario, convictions in the third instance after two acquittals are "extremely rare". From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. ©2021 TorrentFreak | Office 21338 PO Box 4336 Manchester, North West M61 0BW United Kingdom Web Version   Preferences   Forward   Unsubscribe     Powered by Mad Mimi®A GoDaddy® company