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A Malaysian US resident who ran a website that charged users to watch pirated films was ordered by a California court to pay $US23.8 million ($A30.3 million) to movie studios, the industry's trade group said today.
The studios had sued Tan Soo Leong and company MasterSurf for operating the website Film88.com, according to the Motion Picture Association.
The MPA's director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, John Malcolm, said MasterSurf set up an international web of servers designed to shelter the venture from liability.
The trade group said Leong previously operated an almost identical website, Movie88.com, out of Taiwan until authorities there shut the company down.
MasterSurf's primary servers were then hosted out of the Netherlands and Iran, but the MPA and a Netherlands anti-piracy organisation used Dutch courts to shut down servers there, according to the MPA.
Leong and MasterSurf also were barred from infringing on any of the studios' movies, and ordered to destroy any and all copies of copyright films that reside on servers or in other formats.
Malcolm said the MPA "shattered" MasterSurf's capabilities and shut the company down.
"This case shows that some people will go to extravagant lengths to profiteer from pirating movies," he said.
- AFP
