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23 August 2021CopyrightAlex Baldwin

Disney, Amazon, Netflix win injunction against pirate TV operator

A consortium of some of the world’s largest media companies including Disney, Amazon, Netflix and Warner Bros has obtained a preliminary injunction against “mass infringer” Jason Tusa, the alleged operator of several pirate TV subscription services.

A total of 13 media companies sued Tusa at the US District Court for the Central District of California in July, seeking an injunction enjoining Tusa from hosting infringing works on his illegal subscription service Altered Carbon TV.

The companies also requested an injunction preventing the Altered Carbon-related domains from being modified, sold or transferred.

On August 16, the California court ordered both injunction requests in a minute order first reported by TorrentFreak.

Going forward

The preliminary injunction targets several domains operated by Tusa, including alteredcarbon.online, 2pmtoforever.com, catchingbutterflies.host, stealingkisses.me, dum.world, and twoavocados.us.

The domain registers for each website are also prohibited from allowing the domains to be modified, sold, transferred or deleted.

Public access to the websites will be prevented, and all evidence used to identify users of the websites will be preserved.

Prior litigation

Tusa had agreed to stop hosting and presenting copyrighted works following a suit that shut down his previous pirate TV subscription sites Singularity Media and Area 51.

According to a complaint filed on July 6, Area 51 received three million visits between June 2019 and 2020, making it the “largest stand-alone” internet protocol television (IPTV) service at the time.

After the discovery of Area 51, a cease and desist was issued against Tusa, ordering him to halt infringing activities, which he had allegedly signed without court intervention.

A week after the matter was settled, the media companies discovered Tusa had launched Digital UniCorn Media. Another letter was sent to Tusa regarding the infringement and breach of the settlement agreement, but Tusa initially denied any involvement

Altered Carbon was then discovered by the plaintiffs on February 26, 2021.

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