A federal jury in Las Vegas convicted five men for their role in operating one of the largest illegal streaming services in the country.
The five were convicted in June for their part in operating the Jetflicks platform. Subscribers to Jetflicks were charged $9.99 per month. While the platform generated millions of dollars in subscription revenue, the Department of Justice (DOJ) said Jetflicks caused "substantial harm to television program copyright owners."
At one point, Jetflicks boasted that it hosted more than 183,200 TV episodes, a lineup larger than the combined catalogs of official streaming platforms like Amazon Prime Video, Hulu, Netflix and Vudu, said prosecutors. (Related: Woke entertainment is a JOKE! Disney LOST at least $1B this year alone due to a string of box office bombs.)
Court documents and evidence presented before the court stated that as early as 2007, the five defendants – Douglas Courson, Kristopher Dallmann, Felipe Garcia, Peter Huber and Jared Jaurequi – had been operating the streaming service. The men used complicated computer scripts and software to search piracy services such as the Pirate Bay and Torrentz for illegal copies of TV episodes.
The defendants then downloaded the episodes and hosted them on Jetflicks' servers, federal prosecutors reported. The five were charged in 2019 with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law.
Federal prosecutors said that when complaints from copyright owners and issues with payment service providers threatened to bring down the illegal outfit, the defendants "tried to disguise Jetflicks as an aviation entertainment company."
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Nicole Argentieri, principal deputy assistant attorney general for the DOJ's Criminal Division, said in a June 20 statement: "These convictions underscore the Criminal Division's commitment to protecting intellectual property (IP) rights by prosecuting digital piracy schemes and bringing offenders to justice."
Jetflicks verdict a "landmark victory for IP rights"
According to NBC News, the five were convicted of "conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement." The same jury also convicted Dallmann of two counts of money laundering by concealment and three counts of misdemeanor criminal copyright infringement.
Dallmann faces a maximum penalty of 48 years in prison. His four co-conspirators each face a maximum of five years in prison, the DOJ added. A sentencing date has not yet been set, and it is also unknown if the men have legal representation.
Karyn Temple, the Motion Picture Association's (MPA) senior EVP and global general counsel, said the verdict was "a landmark victory for intellectual property rights." She added that the MPA "applauds the DOJ for its successful prosecution of five individuals who brazenly and illegally profited by infringing upon copyrighted works" belonging to the Alliance for Creativity in Entertainment (ACE), a group of entertainment companies focused on combating piracy.
Temple also said that the jury’s conviction highlights the criminal nature of these types of offenses and the "significant harms caused to the creative industry," along with the many workers who earn a living from key industry roles, such as "set designers, caterers, hair and makeup artists, and camera operators, to name a few."
According to federal prosecutors, a member of the original Jetflicks group, Darryl Julius Polo (a.k.a. "djppimp"), quit to create a competing site called iStreamItAll, whose subscription plans had a monthly fee of $19.99.
iStreamItAll also did not have permission to distribute the TV and movie content on the platform, reported officials. In 2019, Polo pleaded guilty to criminal copyright and money laundering charges, according to the DOJ. The following year, he was sentenced to 57 months in prison and ordered to forfeit $1 million in "criminal proceeds."
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