Netflix, Universal, and Disney have received an eight-digit settlement from a popular internet movie and television piracy website.
Between 2022 and 2023, streaming has become very competitive, especially in terms of signing up new subscribers. TV content piracy has also been on the rise for Netflix, Universal, Disney, Apple, Warner Bros, and Paramount.
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Disney, Netflix, and Other Major Studios Get Paid $30M by Piracy Websites
A multi-studio coalition of other studios filed the operators of two movie streaming sites operating illegally. The settlement amounted to $30m and was reached on March 27. The prominent lawsuit was filed in December 2021 before Apple, Warner Bros, and Paramount joined Disney, Netflix, and Universal.
Defendant Johnson was sued for infringing on their copyrights and had to settle with the multi-studio coalition with a payment of $30 million and an injunction preventing Johnson from operating any service that supports movie piracy.
Johnson was the founder of AllAccessTV (AATV) and Quality Restreams. These two services specialize in selling subscriptions to illegal TV content and movie through thousands of live channels and video-on-demand offerings.
The film titles include Hollywood hit series like Jurassic World and Harry Potter as well as TV hits like The Office. Access to Live channel feeds like Cinemax, HBO, NBC, and other major networks was included.
Each user was required to pay for the live feeds with $25 every month. There is also a $15 premium option for an extra month of access to VOD content. Each movie and show had a category, just like that of the streaming services like Netflix, Universal, and Disney where they were pirated from.
Based on the complaint, the extent of the piracy was very huge. Each year, Johnson allegedly earned $3 million from AATV alone. According to the suit, he knew his conduct was very illegal. Johnson stated that he tried various ways to hide the illegal enterprise by pretending to sell VPN software when he was selling pirated content subscriptions.
Tv shows, movies, and publishing were the most pirated media forms with piracy rates that have increased massively. The lawsuit against Johnson was not the first of its kind. In September 2022, Ammo Entertainment, Voltage Pictures, and After Productions, as well as several other studios sued Comcast for being reluctant to prevent ongoing infringements.
The main center of these lawsuits is Copyright laws. If copyright owners can have a way to prove that infringement on their rights is intentional, they can get paid statutory damages amounting to $150,000 per infringed work.
