It’s been revealed that the FBI has recently taken down two massive illegal streaming sites. The two sites, titled iStreamItAll and Jetflicks, were particularly huge websites – with iStreamItAll possessing more than 118,000 TV episodes and 11,000 movies. Obviously these numbers are insane – and luckily for the FBI, prosecutors were able to secure guilty pleas from the programmers – named Darryl Polo and Luis Villarino – involved with both sites.
The news was broken by the Department of Justice, who have broken down the statements made by the computer programmers who created the website. According to them, they emphasized the fact that they carried more content than streaming platforms like Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, etc. combined.
“Polo sent out emails to potential subscribers highlighting ISIA’s huge catalog of works and urging them to cancel those licensed services and subscribe to ISIA instead,” claimed the Department of Justice.
These issues carried over to Jetflicks, which also offered an astounding amount of “copyrighted television episodes” that were available to “tens of thousands of paid subscribers.”
“According to Polo’s plea agreement, Polo obtained infringing television programs and movies from pirate sites around the world,” says the Department of Justice. “Specifically, Polo used sophisticated computer programming to scour global pirate sites for new illegal content; to download, process, and store these works; and then make the shows and movies available on servers in Canada to ISIA subscribers for streaming and downloading.”
As stated in the announcement, Polo and Villarino’s co-defendants will go to trial in early February 2020 while Polo and Villarino themselves are scheduled for sentencing in March 2020.
It’s an upsetting time for the film and television industry, as online piracy and illegal streaming have continued to cut profits not just from the big studios but also independent filmmakers that find difficulty in working because of it. Hopefully the government continues to take down these types of websites and services and protect these copyrighted materials.
Source: Department of Justice