Feds Close Down Seven Movie Pirate Websites, Seize Assets

July 1st, 2010 - 11:08 pm ICT by Angela Kaye Mason  

July 1 (THAINDIAN NEWS) The feds were cracking down on Internet movie pirates this week, after they seized seven websites which were offering customers the chance to download illegal first run movies, such as ‘The Karate Kid’, ‘The Prince of Persia’ , and many others.

One of those sites, ‘Movies-Link.TV’ was one of the world’s most popular websites, having nearly 3.3 million hits each month, according to officials. The Manhattan US Attorney Preet Bharara. showed that the feds were sending a message.

“Criminal copyright infringement occurs on a massive scale over the Internet, resulting in billions of dollars in losses to the U.S. economy,” said Bharara, “That translates into lost jobs and real hardships for ordinary working people. That’s why we took the actions we did. If your business model is movie piracy, your story will not have a happy ending.”

According to Bharara, this type of theft of material on the Internet which is copyrighted can cause losses of billions of dollars to the United States economy. Some of the sites which were seized by US Immigrations and Customs Law Enforcement (ICE) are; TVSHACK.NET, MOVIES-LINKS.TV, FILESPUMP.COM, NOW-MOVIES.COM, PLANETMOVIEZ.COM, THEPIRATECITY.ORG, and ZML.COM.

ICE, and the US Attorney also seized funds from Paypal accounts, bank accounts, and advertising accounts, as well as searching homes in New York, New Jersey, North Carolina, and Washington.

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