Eight people have been charged with conspiring to violate federal copyright law regarding TV show and movie streaming. The indicted individuals have allegedly been running some of the largest pirate streaming sites on the Internet, boasting 100,000 TV episodes and a library described by the DOJ as larger than Netflix, Hulu, or Amazon Prime.
The Department of Justice (DOJ) says that eight people have been indicted by a federal grand jury on charges of conspiring to violate copyright laws by running two of the largest pirate TV show and movie streaming sites, according to a report by Broadcasting & Cable.
Kristopher Lee Dallmann, Darryl Julius Polo, Douglas M. Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Edward Jaurequi, Peter H. Huber, Yoany Vaillant, and Luis Angel Villarino were charged with running “Jetflicks” — an online subscription-based streaming service based out of Las Vegas, Nevada.
The site allowed users to illegally stream and even download copyrighted films and TV shows, which were uploaded to the illegal streaming service from sites like the Pirate Bay and Torrentzas. Another site run by the group, iStream, boasted of having 100,000 TV episodes available for streaming.
Following an FBI investigation, the DOJ says the two sites had a larger content library than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu, or Amazon Prime, which has resulted in the loss subscriber revenue for those legal streaming services, as well as the loss of millions of dollars by copyright owners.
“The two services were not only available to subscribers over the internet but specifically designed to work on many different types of devices, platforms and software including numerous varieties of computer operating systems, smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, video game consoles, digital media players, set-top boxes and web browsers,” said the DOJ.
You can follow Alana Mastrangelo on Twitter at @ARmastrangelo, on Parler at @alana, and on Instagram.
COMMENTS
Please let us know if you're having issues with commenting.