YTS.mx is one of the most used torrent sites on the internet, serving millions of visitors every day.
The site can be used without registering an account. However, those who sign up get some additional features, such as an option to mark titles.
These added benefits can come in handy, but registering an account with a pirate site is not without risk. At the beginning of last year, YTS operators signed a settlement agreement with several movie studios, putting many of the site's users at risk.
YTS user database
The agreement ensured that YTS could continue to operate. However, the operator agreed share YTS user base details, including IP addresses, email addresses, and download histories. This provided film companies with evidence of follow-up lawsuits against these users.
Movie companies, including the makers of "London Has Fallen," "Rambo V," and "Dallas Buyers Club," didn't stop there. For the past few months, they went after VPN providers and hosting companies as well as.
These third-party services are directly or indirectly responsible for piracy, the filmmakers argue, because people use their networks and infrastructure to pirate movies. And despite sending out many copyright infringement notices, these services took no significant action in response.
Film companies sue Datacamp
A few days ago, the film companies filed a new lawsuit in a federal court in Virginia, accusing the British company Datacamp Limited of copyright infringement. Datacamp operated under the CDN77 and Data package brands and reportedly offers its services to various VPN providers.
The lawsuit lists ten nameless VPN services and the defendants "Doe" and the film companies hope to find out their names through this lawsuit.
"DOE 1-10 promotes its VPN service as a tool that can be used to hack copyrighted content without getting caught," the complaint says, adding that VPNs "are associated with notorious movie piracy websites for promote your VPN service as an essential tool for movie piracy. "
Meanwhile, Datacamp is accused of contributory copyright infringement, as it was unable to terminate accounts for these VPN services after repeated warnings. These allegations are similar to what we have seen in the cases against Leaseweb, Sharktech, and other hosting companies.
YTS account with "hacked" email
The YTS database also reappears as evidence. And in this case, that leads to a noteworthy find that we haven't seen before.
Film companies previously sued Indiana resident Mr. Byranski after finding his email address in the YTS user database. The YTS database linked this user to an IP address that is registered with Datacamp, presumably through one of the company's VPN clients.
However, Byranski denied any wrongdoing and testified that he did not use a VPN service or download the pirated movies.
Apparently, Mr. Byranski's email address was "hacked" around the same time and $ 12,000 was stolen from his PayPal account. This leads movie studios to suggest that the hacker could have used the same email to sign up for YTS as well.
"Some of these YTS users [use] DataCamp subscribers' VPN service to illegally access' hack 'third party accounts, use their email addresses to sign up for an account on the YTS website and pirated movies, and illegally access third party bank accounts โSays the complaint. .
No hacking skills needed
Actually, no hacking skills are required to use a third party email address to sign up for YTS. Everyone can use a random email to register an account as the YTS website does not require users to verify their addresses.
The film companies eventually dismissed their copyright infringement claims against Byranski, but not before obtaining a formal statement putting pressure on Datacamp.
Like the film companies, Byranski stated that it would have been better if Datacamp had taken action after receiving multiple notices of copyright infringement.
"I wish Datacamp Limited had taken action against the subscriber at this IP address in response to those notices so that possibly the damages I have suffered from this hacking, including the allegation of copyright infringement, could have been prevented," the statement says. .
Mr. Byranski received a full refund from Paypal and the copyright infringement claims were also dropped. Instead, the filmmakers now use his statement as ammunition in the Datacamp lawsuit.
Damages, crashes and more
Datacamp has yet to respond to the allegations. The company is charged with contributory and vicarious copyright infringement, among other things, and faces more than $ 1 million in potential damages.
As in other lawsuits against VPN services and hosting providers, movie companies are also asking for far-reaching measures in the form of a court order.
Among other things, they ask the court to issue an order requiring the hosting company to block ports 6881-6889, which are commonly used for BitTorrent traffic. In addition, the company should prevent its customers from accessing pirated sites such as YTS, The Pirate Bay, Rarbg, and 1337x.
-
A copy of the complaint that the motion picture companies filed against Datacamp Limited in the Eastern District of Virginia is available. here (pdf).
