Mumbai: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) filed a lawsuit in federal court in Los Angeles against Pullmylink.com, a website that facilitates copyright infringement on the internet.
 
Sites like Pullmylink contribute to and profit from massive copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organizing, and indexing links to infringing content found on the Internet that consumers can then view on-demand when visiting these sites.
 
"Pullmylink.com and sites like it are a one-stop shop for copyright infringement… Profiting from the theft of other people’s creative works is illegal and we have every intention of shutting this, and sites like it, down for good," said MPAA executive vice president and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations John Malcolm.
 
Pullmylink and similar illegal sites rely on advertisers to maintain their operations and profit handsomely from a seemingly endless stream of third-party advertising pitches. With servers located in Scottsdale, Arizona, Pullmylink averages over 12,000 unique daily visitors who view over 39,000 pages of content per day.
 
A civil lawsuit was filed against Pullmylink in US District Court in Los Angeles for damages and injunctive relief for violations under the United States Copyright Act of 1976. This is the seventh lawsuit filed on behalf of the Hollywood movie studios against websites like Pullmylink. Previous lawsuits were filed against peekvid.com, youtvpc.com, showstash.com, cinematube.net, ssupload.com, and videohybrid.com.
 
The worldwide motion picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers, distributors, theaters, video stores and pay-per-view operators lost $18.2 billion in 2005 as a result of piracy –over $7 billion of which is attributed to internet piracy and more than $11 billion attributed to hard goods piracy including bootlegging and illegal copying.