Hollywood Chases Chinese Piracy Site

Five major movie studios are demanding nearly half a million dollars in damages from a Chinese Web site that allegedly distributed pirated movies to an Internet café.

Even Hollywood doesn’t quite have the resources to chase down every pirated video peddler on city streets, but its studios have found a way to try to reduce the flow of pirated movies another way – by hitting distributors. One major Chinese distributor is feeling the pressure lately, as five studios have come down on it with a lawsuit seeking $432,024 in damages.

According to PC World, Jeboo.com allegedly provided copyrighted movies to an Internet café in Shangai, and now faces a lawsuit in the city’s No. 2 Intermediate Court from Twentieth Century Fox, Walt Disney, Universal, Paramount and Columbia Pictures. The list of 12 films supposedly pirated includes Pirates of the Caribbean 2: Dead Man’s Chest, Click, and Hitch.

An international division of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) is handling the suit. According to Frank Rittman, legal counsel for the organization, the popularity of Internet cafes in China has made them hubs for piracy, which cuts into studios’ bottom lines to the tune of $2.7 billion annually, by MPA estimates.