The Motion Picture Association of America
(MPAA) has filed suits against Fomdb.com and Movierumor.com, sites
which it says facilitate copyright infringement.
"These sites contribute to and profit from
massive copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organizing,
and indexing links to infringing content found on the Internet that
consumers can then view on-demand," said an MPAA statement.
The organisation has filed two civil suits
asking for damages and injunctions against the sites under the US
Copyright Act of 1976.
"There are many people operating illegal
websites like these who are profiting from the theft of protected
content," said John Malcolm, director of anti-piracy operations for
the MPAA. "We have filed several other similar lawsuits and will
continue to do so in order to hold operators accountable for their
illegal activities. We have every intention of shutting down these,
and sites like them, for good."
The MPAA won two US cases earlier this year
over the posting of links to pirated content. It won a $2.7 million
judgment against Showstash and a $1.3m judgment against Cinematube
in May of this year.
The ruling in the Cinematube case said:
"Defendant has engaged in contributory copyright infringement and
inducement of copyright infringement by actively searching for,
identifying, collecting, posting, organizing, indexing, and posting
on his website (www.cinematube.net) links to infringing material,
which has been posted on thirdparty websites".
Controversy has surrounded attempts to make
website responsible for linking to, rather than directly hosting or
disseminating, material.
A man was arrested in October last year in the
UK for running a website which linked to copies of old television
programmes.
The Federation Against Copyright Theft released
a statement at the time claiming that he was arrested for offences
related to the "facilitation of copyright infringement", while the
police said that it was for "supplying property with a registered
trade mark without permission".
The first of these is not an offence and the
second does not fit the circumstances, according to Kim Walker,
head of intellectual property at Pinsent Masons, the law firm
behind OUT-LAW.COM.
"We don't have an offence in the UK for
facilitation of copyright infringement," said Walker at the time.
"Instead, it is possible that prosecutors could attempt to
characterise this as an offence of 'distributing' infringing copies
or 'communicating' copies to the public in the course of a
business."
"If TV Links carried advertising, it's arguably
a business. If it didn't carry advertising, it can still be
criminal if the site can be shown to affect the copyright owner in
a prejudicial way," he said.
A French court ruled earlier this year that a
site which linked to material had the same liability as the site
which hosted the material.
In a case involving Kylie Minogue's
ex-boyfriend Olivier Martinez, the courts said that sites which
linked to articles which illegally invaded his privacy shared
responsibility for that invasion.
