The Motion Picture Association of America has filed a suit in the U.S. District Court of Los Angeles against Cinematube and Ssupload, saying both web sites facilitate copyright infringement. The MPAA accuses the sites of benefiting from rampant copyright infringement by identifying, organizing, posting, and indexing links to pirated videos and movies. "We will continue to scour the Internet for these illegal sites, and through lawsuits such as these we are putting illegal Web operators on notice that they are not above the law and will face serious consequences for their activities," said John Malcolm, MPAA"s executive VP of Worldwide Anti-Piracy Operations.
The MPAA says that both sites enjoy "significant profits" as a result of advertising displayed on the sites, as well as user donations. The association estimates that Cinematube nets over 24,000 unique visitors a day on average, with Ssupload averaging over double that at 55,000 unique visitors per day. The MPAA notes that neither site hosts the illicit content, much of which is still in theaters, but rather contains links to other sites that do. Both sites are believed to be based in the US (Georgia and Arizona, respectively), the increase in lawsuits against sites that point to illegal movies may push them to move operations overseas as well in order to skirt litigation.