MPAA forces Popcorn Time shutdown

Suits filed by the Motion Picture Association of America prompted the shutdown of both the Popcorntime.io "fork" and BitTorrent site YTS.

The Popcorn Time streaming service and BitTorrent site YTS have both been shut down after court orders were issued in both Canada and New Zealand following suits filed by the Motion Picture Association of America.

On Tuesday, the organization announced it had filed a lawsuit on Oct. 9 in Canada’s Federal Court against three Canadians it alleged were key operators the popcorntime.io “fork,” which in turn enabled users to watch copyrighted movies and TV shows. On Oct. 16, the MPAA received an interim injunction which ordered the shutdown of the site and its corresponding app. According to comScore information provided by the MPAA, the Popcorn Time “fork” had received 1.5 million unique visitors in July 2015 alone.

The MPAA also said Wednesday it had filed a separate lawsuit in New Zealand’s High Court against a New Zealand resident it alleged was the operator of YTS, a BitTorrent and release group that MPAA said was a primary source of Popcorn Time’s movie content. The MPAA said the court issued an interim injunction that also ordered the shutdown of YTS.

“Popcorn Time and YTS are illegal platforms that exist for one clear reason: to distribute stolen copies of the latest motion pictures and television shows without compensating the people who worked so hard to make them,” said Senator Chris Dodd, chairman and CEO of MPAA in a statement. “By shutting down these illegal commercial enterprises, which operate on a massive global scale, we are protecting not only our members’ creative work and the hundreds of innovative, legal digital distribution platforms, but also the millions of people whose jobs depend on a vibrant motion picture and television industry.”

The MPAA’s membership is made up of six major U.S. studios, including Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLC and Warner Bros Entertainment Inc.

In a statement, Canadian Media Production Association president and CEO Reynolds Mastin also expressed his support for the MPPA’s efforts and the ruling.

“The CMPA supports consumer-friendly ways to legally access Canadian content. However, applications like Popcorn Time that openly encourage, promote, and facilitate copyright infringement threaten valuable jobs in the Canadian feature film and TV industry, as well as undermine the sustainability of the independent producer voice,” Mastin said. “The CMPA is therefore supportive of the efforts by the MPAA, MPA-Canada, and their member companies to pursue the remedies available under Canada’s copyright laws against Popcorn Time and related applications.”

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