Posted on 08/28/2019 9:29:15 PM PDT by ransomnote
A federal grand jury returned an indictment today charging eight individuals with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law by running two of the largest unauthorized streaming services in the United States, resulting in the loss of millions of dollars by television program and motion picture copyright owners.
Assistant Attorney General Brian A. Benczkowski of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division, U.S. Attorney G. Zachary Terwilliger of the Eastern District of Virginia and Assistant Director in Charge Timothy R. Slater of the FBI’s Washington Field Office made the announcement today.
According to the indictment, Kristopher Lee Dallmann, 36; Darryl Julius Polo, aka djppimp, 36; Douglas M. Courson, 59; Felipe Garcia, 37; Jared Edward Jaurequi, aka Jared Edwards, 38; Peter H. Huber, 61; Yoany Vaillant, aka Yoany Vaillant Fajardo, 38; and Luis Angel Villarino, 40, allegedly ran an entity called Jetflicks, an online subscription-based service headquartered in Las Vegas, Nevada, that permitted users to stream and, at times, download copyrighted television programs without the permission of the relevant copyright owners.
The defendants reproduced tens of thousands of copyrighted television episodes without authorization, and distributed the infringing programs to tens of thousands of paid subscribers located throughout the U.S. At one point, Jetflicks claimed to have more than 183,200 different television episodes. One of the defendants, Polo, left Jetflicks and created a competing site based in Las Vegas called iStreamItAll (ISIA) that at one point claimed to have 115,849 different television episodes and 10,511 individual movies. Like Jetflicks, ISIA offered content for a regular subscription fee to viewers around the United States, and ISIA publicly asserted that it had more content than Netflix, Hulu, Vudu and Amazon Prime. The two services were not only available to subscribers over the internet but specifically designed to work on many different types of devices, platforms and software including numerous varieties of computer operating systems, smartphones, tablets, smart televisions, video game consoles, digital media players, set-top boxes and web browsers.
In addition, the grand jury charged Dallmann with two counts of criminal copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution, two counts of criminal copyright by public performance and four counts of money laundering, and charged Polo with two counts of criminal copyright infringement by distributing a copyrighted work being prepared for commercial distribution, two counts of criminal copyright infringement by reproduction or distribution, two counts of criminal copyright infringement by public performance and four counts of money laundering.
According to the indictment, Jetflicks allegedly obtained infringing television programs from pirate websites around the world—including some of the globe’s biggest torrent and Usenet sites specializing in infringing content such as The Pirate Bay, RARBG and Torrentz—using various automated computer scripts, often providing episodes to subscribers the day after the shows originally aired on television. Specifically, the defendants allegedly used sophisticated computer code to scour global pirate sites for new illegal content to download, process and store the shows, and then make those episodes available on servers in the United States and Canada to Jetflicks subscribers for streaming and/or downloading.
According to the indictment, Polo was allegedly part of the computer programming team that built Jetflicks but later left and started ISIA, a competing service based in Las Vegas that offered not only television programs but movies. Polo allegedly used many of the same automated tools that Jetflicks employed to locate, download, process and store illegal content, and then quickly make those television programs and movies available on servers in Canada to ISIA subscribers for streaming and/or downloading. In fact, some of the movies offered by ISIA were not yet available for authorized sale, download, or viewing outside a movie theater.
The charges and allegations contained in the indictment are merely accusations. The defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.
The FBI conducted the investigation. Senior Counsel Matthew A. Lamberti of the Criminal Division’s Computer Crime and Intellectual Property Section and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alexander P. Berrang of the Eastern District of Virginia and are prosecuting the case.
Let me know when they charge ripoff service providers for “bundling”
I think all Hollywood movies should be illegal anyway.
A donor bought the Spectrum package for our club, I have no idea what it costs, but its 2000 channels of pralines and dick.
There are perhaps 5 ch anyone watch’s.
I get 62 ch off a $35 antenna
Most of it is dreck.
There are servers in Europe that stream a show 5 minutes after it’s been aired by the Networks.
Hey, who doesn’t want to watch a channel dedicated to showing the ten thousand different ways to make Mac and Cheese?
Over and over again.
:)
Someone added the NFL channel, now we con watch reruns of preseason games over and over till you want to puke.
and who predicted this good thing would come to an end??
I am currently watching a nice little “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” written by Ray Bradbury.
all free on the antenna.
Not only that but sporting events are a better quality picture on antenna. Cable and satellite chokes down the signal.
DOJ can’t go after these same big corporations for tax evasion. It only makes sense to go after the little guys for stealing from these tax evaders.
Seems to me that if you’re gonna do something like this, you want to do it from a country without an extradition treaty with the DOJ. Doing it from Vegas is, in a word, unwise.
Kinda stinks too.
The Justice Dept. moves mighty fast when they want to.
One day these people will be heroes. Scums taking down Obama NEtflix? Ha!
ON a side note, it would not be surprising if the OBamas ran some black ghetto TV network doing the same out of Chicago and getting away with it provided the deep state got embarassed enough...
That is true.
Knobby red LOL
Anyone paying for a full cable package is either a fool or a raging, gender confused leftist. Over the air, on my antenna, I can watch the best of 60 years of quality TV programming plus Hollywood’s best from the golden age of movies. $100+ a month to watch perverts on parade and to be insulted by current Hollyweirdness, not for me.
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