The story centers around two recently closed sites. The first is Watch The Simpsons Online, a site that had been around since 2008. The second, Watch Family Guy Online, had been online since 2009.

As their names suggest, the sites gave Internet users the opportunity to watch Fox TV shows The Simpsons and Family Guy online. This was achieved via embedded web players utilizing external video sources.

The sites did fairly well, with the later achieving around seven million visitors and the former around 80 million during their lifetimes. Due to unwanted attention from Fox, both had to employ domain switches to stay online, something which no doubt affected their traffic.

The first sign that Fox were sizing up Watch The Simpsons Online (WTSO) came in 2008. Sources inform TorrentFreak that Fox were “shutting the site down almost weekly” by threatening its hosts.

The domain being used at the time – WatchTheSimpsonsOnline.com – was eventually seized by Fox after the company won an uncontested WIPO dispute. As can be seen in the image below, it is now listed as belonging to Fox’s IP department.

WTSO returned under a new domain but in 2010 the MPAA sent a cease and desist, including a complaint for WFGO (Watch Family Guy Online) for good measure. The site admin complied and later transferred the domain to a new owner, who some time later appears to have transferred it back.

Fox, however, had certainly not forgotten about the sites.

Records show that on October 2, 2013, Fox paid $50 to file a copyright infringement complaint at the Federal Court in Toronto, Canada. On the same day requests were filed to keep court documents “confidential” pending the issuing of a court order.

On October 8, a so-called “Anton Piller” order was granted by a judge in the Federal Court. This order grants entities the right to carry out searches and seize evidence without prior warning with the aim of preventing evidence destruction. They are often used in copyright and trademark disputes.

Order in hand, Fox wasted no time. On October 9, two lawyers from Fox, two court appointed lawyers, two IT professionals and a forensics specialist turned up at an address in Canada looking for the alleged admin of WTSO. After gaining access to the property with the full permission of the court, they seized all of the defendant’s electronic devices and other related items.

The punchline was the handing over of a $10.5 million lawsuit alongside orders not to meddle with the sites.

The seized devices were returned within 72 hours, presumably having been cloned, but it soon became clear the matter would press on.

The alleged admin of the site was given an opportunity to settle the case for a cool $1 million, an “impossible amount” according to our sources. Despite the lack of a formal agreement, both Watch The Simpsons Online and Watch Family Guy Online were taken down and now display links to Hulu and Fox.com.

Nevertheless, the legal proceedings continued. On October 16 a review took place in the Federal Court which established that the Anton Piller order had been properly granted and executed. A date of October 22 was set for a court appearance by the defendant, but the hearing took place with no defendant present after he failed to appear.

Sources close to the case inform TorrentFreak that the likely outcome will be a $10m+ default judgment in favor of Fox, to be boosted by more than $600,000 to cover legal costs. We shouldn’t have to wait long to discover the full details.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

In their complaint against Patricia McIlvaine (also known as P.J. McIlvaine) and Does 1-10, the Hollywood giant says it is seeking damages and injunctive relief for copyright infringement and contributory copyright infringement.

The studio claims that P.J “uploaded and made available to others via the Internet a script of Deadpool, the copyright to which is owned by Fox, and which is a script for a project still in development.”

P.J is further accused of uploading and making available “roughly 100 movie and television scripts” during 2009 and 2010, some of them relating to relatively old films such as Aliens, Edward Scissorhands and Wall Street.

The actual court papers list 79 movie scripts, only one of which is unreleased. Fox want $150,000 in statutory damages for each and every one.

Does 1-10 refers to the individuals who allegedly supplied P.J. with the scripts, although it is claimed that P.J only reposts scripts already available on the Internet. Indeed, a quick search for a handful of the scripts showed them all to be available quickly from multiple sources.

Fox states that P.J’s actions “harm the fans who do not want their enjoyment of a movie or television show to be spoiled by knowing the story ahead of actually being able to watch it.”

Perhaps those people, if they don’t want their enjoyment curtailed, should simply not spend hours seeking out and reading scripts. A simple but effective solution for unreleased movies perhaps, but one likely to fail miserably when applied to a movie such as Aliens, which has been out for 26 years already.

Nevertheless, the movie Deadpool is rather more fresh and is not due for release until 2012 and it appears that Fox has been actively trying to get its script removed from the Internet. A writer at mypdfscripts says that the studio got in touch with his site recently after they published a review of the script, a script which Fox described as “stolen property.”

While we appreciate your interest in the Film and your enjoyment of the script, the Film is a confidential project in development. Your purported review provides important qualitative details about character, plot, setting and mood, thereby violating Fox’s rights in and to the copyrights to the screenplay.

As you are likely aware, copyright law protects an author’s right of first publication. Harper & Row Publishers, Inc. v. Nation Enterprises, 471 U.S. 539, 554-55 (1985). Fox therefore demands that you immediately remove and not re-publish your “review,” in whole or part.

In its case against P.J, Fox says that the company took action to have the Deadpool script removed from various websites (believed to include the Mediafire file-hosting service) last month, but complains that P.J uploaded it again. However, there is no mention in the lawsuit that Fox issued P.J with a DMCA takedown request or contacted her in any way.

According to a posting, P.J is facing a huge struggle.

“PJ doesn’t have the kind of cash needed to hire an attorney. Like I said, days she works a telephone line selling flowers to make ends meet and nights she writes — fighting to bridge that artist-who-does-art vs. artist-who-gets-paid-for-art gap,” notes a posting on the Celluloid Blonde blog.

“In between she is caring for an elderly relative suffering from dementia. In between that she is caring for an infant. She is going to need help.”

Soft target? It certainly sounds like it. $12 million damages? Simply obscene.

People who can afford it are being asked to make donations via PayPal to pjscriptcooperative@gmail.com, so that P.J can at least fight her corner with the help of representation.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.