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VPN.ht is asking a Virginia federal court to dismiss the piracy lawsuit filed by a group of movie companies earlier this year. The VPN service argues that the court has no jurisdiction over the company and its Algerian operator, who had never heard of Virginia before this case started. VPN.ht also asks the court to lift a temporary restraining order that froze the PayPal account of a third-party company.
A group of movie production outfits, including affiliates of the film studios Millennium Media and Voltage Pictures, filed a lawsuit against VPN.ht in March.
The companies accuse the VPN provider of promoting the piracy app Popcorn Time to its users, noting that a VPN.ht IP-address was repeatedly used to share pirated films.
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A few weeks ago, several movie companies sued a widely used Popcorn Time fork, as well as VPN.ht. When the app s official website disappeared a few days later most people assumed that the developers had decided to throw in the towel. However, this early conclusion is unwarranted. While there are internal struggles, Popcorn Time plans to make a comeback.
For more than seven years, Popcorn Time has been a thorn in the side of movie studios large and small.
The ‘Netflix for Pirates’ offers an easy-to-use application that opens the door to a library of thousands of streamable movies and TV shows.
Popcorn Time, Schrecken der Filmindustrie, plant ein Comeback winfuture.de - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from winfuture.de Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Hellboy, Hunter Killer and I Feel Pretty. They re suing in Virginia, where a company called Voxility has data centers that host Wicked s sites.
In April, U.S. District Judge Rossie D. Alston Jr. froze the assets of their PayPal accounts, enjoined PayPal from allowing those funds to be transferred and allowed limited discovery directed to third-parties PayPal, GitHub and Cloudfare. The plaintiffs then asked for an order that would freeze the defendants accounts at Tennessee-based Evolve Bank & Trust.
So far, none of the defendants have responded to the suit in court.
Alston notes that courts don t award preliminary injunctions lightly, but in this case he found the plaintiffs are likely to succeed on the merits of their claims and are likely to suffer irreparable harm absent the relief.
Popcorn Time Movie Piracy Suit: Asset Freeze Expanded hollywoodreporter.com - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from hollywoodreporter.com Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.