YNOT – Two Hollywood heavyweights have teamed to take the fight against content piracy in a new direction. Instead of chasing pirates and the file-sharing services they employ, the Walt Disney Co. and Warner Bros. filed a federal lawsuit against a company that provides advertising and consulting services to at least nine websites that either host infringing content or index the content on other sites.Filed Aug. 24 in a California U.S. District Court, the suit alleges Triton Media committed contributory infringement and encouraged copyright infringement by providing financial assistance to Free-TV-Video-Online.info, SupernovaTube.com, Donogo.com, Watch-Movies.net, Watch-Movies-Online.tv, Watch-Movies-Links.net, HavenVideo.com and PirateCity.org.
The lawsuit indicates Disney and Warner may name additional, similar defendants.
According to documents filed with the court, Triton is aware the websites it supports knowingly contribute to copyright infringement.
The Disney-Warner suit is eerily similar to a 2004 action filed against MasterCard and Visa by softcore adult publisher Perfect 10. In that lawsuit, Perfect 10 accused the credit card giants of contributing to copyright infringement by providing “crucial transactional support services” to sites that hosted pirated Perfect 10 content. A district court dismissed the suit, and the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals later upheld the lower court’s decision after determining Perfect 10 failed to provide any legitimate support for its legal theory.
Disney and Warner seek unspecified monetary damages and an injunction preventing Triton from dealing further with the alleged infringement assistors.
