MPAA starts new crackdown on movie piracy, takes down 9 sites

MPAA starts new crackdown on movie piracy, takes down 9 sites

Filed under: Business, News

The MPAA is at it again, going after movie pirates. This time, U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE) is helping out the movie industry, and they've seized nine different domains: Movies-links.TV, nowmovies.com, thepiratecity.org, filespump.com, planetmoviez.com, zml.org, tvshack.net, ninjavideo.net and thisninja.net. These were mostly ad-supported movie streaming sites that showed pirated versions of current theatrical releases.

The new crackdown, called "Operation In Our Sites" was announced at Disney (of course it was). This whole thing rubs me the wrong way. ICE is part of Homeland Security, and acting as police for private movie studios hardly seems like a Homeland Security issue. Also, shutting down streaming movie sites, even if you seize their assets (as ICE has), is almost a futile pursuit. ICE says it will take a year for a new site to grow as big as the ones they just shut down, but I'm betting at least 2 will start up for every one they close.

Apparently, pharmaceuticals, games, music and other software are next on the ICE hit list.
[via CNBC]

MPAA starts new crackdown on movie piracy, takes down 9 sites originally appeared on Download Squad on Wed, 30 Jun 2010 17:40:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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