Hollywood Studios Win Piracy Battle Against PrimeWire

The battle between intellectual property owners and software piracy is as old as the internet. Streaming websites and peer-to-peer file sharing applications such as Napster, LimeWire, Kazaa, and DC++ have allowed consumers to acquire music, television shows, video games, movies, and other content for free, to the chagrin of movie studios, music labels, and television networks. Many of these services have been taken down over the years--the law has been fairly consistent in labeling unlicensed streaming or file-sharing as copyright infringement--but new forms of software piracy continue to arise. Several Hollywood studios and their “enemy of my enemy is my friend” ally Netflix recently won another huge battle against PrimeWire, one of the more popular unauthorized streaming websites to come about in recent years.

In December 2021, Paramount, Netflix, Columbia, Disney, Universal, and Warner filed a lawsuit against PrimeWire alleging copyright infringement. PrimeWire is a streaming website that provided links to stream a large library of movies and TV shows (without the consent of the studios, of course). The plaintiffs obtained a preliminary injunctionpreliminary injunctionA preliminary injunction is a temporary court order issued before a case is finally decided that requires a party to take or stop an action while the litigation continues. Federal courts generally consider the likelihood of success, irreparable harm, the balance of equities, and the public interest before granting one.Read more → to force PrimeWire to stop infringing their copyrights.

The complaint alleges direct infringement as well as “contributory infringement” and “induced infringement.” Direct infringement is obvious: As alleged, PrimeWire made unauthorized reproductions of the plaintiffs’ copyrighted works. They copied the videos and streamed them. The other forms of infringement are a bit more nuanced.

The plaintiffs claim PrimeWire committed induced infringement by curating third-party streaming links, providing detailed instructions for rating and streaming the works, and by generally encouraging those third parties to infringe. PrimeWire also committed “contributory” infringement by materially contributing to third-party acts of infringement--namely, by moderating third-party links to pirated works, advising users on the use of VPNs and other IP-masking tools, and providing the means to connect unauthorized reproducers with eager end-users. In the copyright world, these charges are a lot like aiding and abetting or conspiracy to commit infringement.

On April 20, 2022, the studios won a huge legal victory against PrimeWire, in large part because PrimeWire neglected to actually show up. PrimeWire responded to the enforcement action by switching domains and removing all links to pirated content. They also promised to introduce upload filters to stop pirated content from appearing on the site. PrimeWire did not, however, formally respond to the complaint in court. PrimeWire communicated directly with the studios’ legal team several times, via anonymous emails, arguing that they had long since stopped distributing pirated content, but they did not file an answer in court.

Because PrimeWire failed to file an answer or otherwise defend itself in court, the plaintiffs moved for default judgment on the issue of liability. The court found that the plaintiffs had stated a proper case for copyright infringement and satisfied the other basic requirements for default judgment. The court granted the plaintiffs a permanent injunction preventing PrimeWire from unauthorized distribution of their works in the future, either directly or by facilitating piracy at the hands of third parties.

The court not only granted judgment in favor of the plaintiffs on the issue of liability and the injunction--the court also agreed to transfer the operation of PrimeWire’s website to the plaintiffs. The court agreed that such a transfer of control is appropriate to prevent future copyright infringement. The plaintiffs were also granted leave to conduct discovery in order to gather proof on the issue of damages, which will be decided later.