In a complaint dated 23rd August and filed in the U.S. District Court in California, movie giants Disney and Warner Bros revealed their intention to go after Triton Media, a Scottsdale, Arizona-based company they claim “owned, operated, provided advertising consulting and referrals for, and/or provided other material assistance” to nine movie-centric sites.

The sites – freetv-video-online.info, supernovatube.corn, donogo.com, watch-movies.net, watchmovies-online.tv, watch-movies-links.net, havenvideo.com and thepiratecity.org – are said to have a primary purpose to provide “their users access to content that has been unlawfully reproduced, distributed, publicly performed, and/or publicly displayed.”

The content listed includes Ratatouille and Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End for Disney, and The Bucket List, Fool’s Gold and Smallville for Warner Bros.

While the majority of the sites listed above merely offered links to Disney and Warner movies, the lawsuit states that two – supernovatube and donogo – are sites that actually stored the plaintiffs’ movies. Interestingly it states that donogo (currently offline) was actually owned and operated by Triton Media. Readers will recall that thepiratecity.org recently had its domain name seized as part of the FBI-run Operation In Our Sites.

The lawsuit states that Triton Media is guilty of both contributory copyright infringement and induced copyright infringement and as such the plaintiffs “are entitled to the maximum statutory damages as permitted by federal copyright law”.

Although details are scarce at the moment, the part that Triton played in the sites’ operation will prove key in this case. Definitely one to watch in the months to come, as the implications for other US-based advertisers could be huge.

Source: Hollywood Sues Advertiser at Movie Piracy Sites

Sweeney spoke these wise words in her keynote address at the Mipcom festival

“We understand now that piracy is a business model, it exists to serve a need in the market for consumers who want TV content on demand. Pirates compete the same way we do – through quality, price and availability.”

She continued:

“This time two years ago, Disney was congratulating themselves at the end of a season that saw lost and Desperate Housewives make it big. But at the end of the meeting, the head of operations and engineering presented a high-quality, ad-free version of DH that had been put online less than 15 minutes after the show aired. That was a defining moment for the business. We we don’t like the model but we realize it’s competitive enough to make it a major competitor going forward.”

Wise words. The keynote is very similar (if not the same) to the one she gave at the Progress & Freedom Foundation’s Aspen Summit in August where Sweeney explained that Piracy was the main cause for Disney’s iTunes move.

Apparently the HD-rip of Desperate Housewives made quite an impression.

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Source: Disney Says Piracy Is A Business Model

Disney doesn’t see itself as just a broadcaster or a cable channel, but as a provider of content and will do all it can to make that content available to its viewers in whatever form they prefer

However, it seems like Disney is only taking action once they start losing money. At least, that’s what I make up from the following passage in Sweeney’s talk.

Coming “face to face” with the high-quality, commercial-free pirated version (of desperate housewives) told Disney that it was not just competing with other broadcasters, but with digital pirates and as such was an experience that prompted us to do the iTunes deal with Apple.

So it looks like it were the Pirates that motivated Disney to progress. Anyway, it’s a step forward. I’m wondering how many pirated movies it takes before the first Disney blockbuster movie premieres online.

Source: BitTorrent Caused Disney’s Itunes Move