Snip from a press release issued today by the Motion Picture Association of America regarding seven lawsuits filed today against filesharing service providers — and newsgroups believed to be hubs for fileswapping activity:
Today’s lawsuits mark the first time the MPAA is taking action against sites that enable users of Newsgroups to easily find and download illegal content. Newsgroups are electronic bulletin boards which in recent years have become a major source of pirated content as users are able to attach movie, music and games files to their messages. The following is a list of the sites being sued by the MPAA and its member companies.
Isohunt.com, BTHub.com and TorrentBox.com: These related Torrent sites facilitate downloads of over 140,000 content items, including popular movies and television shows such as Wedding Crashers, Lost and Desperate Housewives.
TorrentSpy.com is the world’s most-visited site for obtaining infringing content using Torrent software. The site offers over 160,000 content items including 27,182 movies, 21,130 TV shows and over 45,000 music items.
NiteShadow.com has over 24,000 registered members and offers over 1,000 science-fiction TV and movie content including Battlestar Galactica, Quantum Leap, Sliders, Stargate, Babylon 5 and multiple Star Trek series.
eDonkey: Ed2k-It.com is a leading eDonkey site, with over 46,000 registered site members. eDonkey sites provide easy one-click access to specific content items on their peer-to-peer network.
Newsgroups: NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net are membership-based websites that enable users of Newsgroups to initiate easy downloads of infringing content. NZB-Zone offers over 3.3 million files, including Star Wars Episode III, Wedding Crashers, Chronicles of Narnia, 40 Year-Old Virgin and King Kong; BinNews.com offers files for over 3,000 movies; and DVDRs.net has over 37,000 members.
Reader comment: Gary says,
Just thought I would say that NZB-Zone.com, BinNews.com and DVDRs.net do not contain any files other than ‘maps’ or nzbs to files already posted on usenet. This is even less direct than torrents as you have to pay a private provider for usenet access to begin with.