Linking to Pirated Content Leads to $4 Million in Fines
The Motion Picture Association of America won another big victory in its battle against film piracy. Two sites, ShowStash.net and Cinematube.net, were fined for merely linking to copyrighted movies, not actually hosting them. This comes on the heels of a $110 million judgment against the torrent tracker TorrentSpy, which in turn killed TorrentSpy for good.
Since most of the illegal films out there right now are stationed overseas, the MPAA can’t do a lot to take down guys in Kazakhstan from hosting a pirated version of Indiana Jones. Now, however, they are going after the sites within their purview that are linking to those overseas sites.
What will be the result of this? Simple enough: sites that are inside the United States and point to pirated content will themselves move overseas. Maybe the MPAA should go to the UN and convince them to do a peacekeeping mission against Internet pirates in Antigua. It may be their last best hope at this point.
Technorati Tags: mpaa, showstash, cinematube, torrentspy
