OP 21 November, 2024 - 11:00 PM
A federal grand jury in Las Vegas has found five men guilty of involvement in Jetflicks, one of the largest and most popular illegal streaming services in the United States. The programmer who created the massive pirate website faces a long prison term after five years of trial and a two-week trial. The case vividly illustrates the scale of intellectual property violations in the digital age and the harshness of the punishment that awaits those found guilty.
The Case
A federal grand jury in the United States has indicted a group of people who conspired to violate copyright law, The Register reports. After five years of grueling trials and a two-week trial that recently concluded, the lead developer of Jetflicks faces a long prison sentence.
Yoany Vaillant, a 43-year-old Cuban national who was a permanent resident of the United States, played a key role in the operation of the Jetflicks website. Vaillant at the time claimed that Jetflicks hosted more than 183,000 episodes of television shows for streaming and downloading, more than currently exist on any major streaming service. The defendant, who was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, became the eighth and final defendant to be convicted in the case. Vaillant faces a possible prison term of up to 10 years, a fine of the amount provided for in this section, or both if the act constituted a felony. The illegal
distribution network reached tens of thousands of American users, and the pirates had a lot to offer: Jetflicks is known to have bragged about having more than 183,200 titles in its catalog, mostly episodes of popular television series. Jetflicks operated for 12 years, from its launch in 2007 until it was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2019. At its peak, the service offered more than 10,500 movies and 183,000 TV episodes, collected from legal platforms (including Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime) using automated scripts.
Vaillant, like Jetflicks, was based in Las Vegas and had 15 years of experience as an IT developer and was proficient in 27 programming languages. He worked at Jetflicks for just four and a half months, but during that time, prosecutors say, he made significant contributions to the site. Specifically, Vaillant fixed bugs related to the extensive automated processes used by Jetflicks, such as downloading, processing, synchronizing, uploading, and streaming the site’s catalog.
Yoani Vaillant was one of eight people indicted in 2019 for playing a key role in the success of Jetflicks, including two other software developers, Darryl Polo and Luis Villarino. Polo was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, while Villarino was sentenced to one year and one day. Polo
was given the longer sentence because of additional charges beyond criminal copyright infringement, including money laundering and operating iStreamitall, a separate illegal streaming site. At some point, Darryl Polo split with his Jetflicks partners to create his own pirate service, iStreamItAll (ISIA), which not only had nearly 116,000 TV episodes in its catalog, but also more than 10,000 feature films, according to court records. ISIA operated on the same principle as Jetflicks, a paid subscription service in the United States and Canada. The service positioned itself as the largest catalog of streaming content - it had more than any of the legal platforms, be it Netflix, Hulu, Vudu or Amazon Prime. Both pirate services worked on various types of devices, platforms and software, and were compatible with almost all operating systems (OS), smartphones, tablets, game consoles, digital media players, streaming TV boxes and web browsers.
“The defendants conspired to operate an online streaming IT service that illegally reproduced and distributed thousands of copyrighted television programs for their own profit. This case is another example of our commitment to combating intellectual property theft and holding those who violate intellectual property laws accountable,” said Jason Frierson, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, after the trial.
According to Frierson, after Jetflicks began to receive legal complaints and problems with payment service providers, the operators tried to hide the nature of the IT service by renaming it JetFlix, a platform that was supposedly intended for streaming content. As it turned out later, this did not help.
The sentence for the programmer of the pirate cinema Jetflicks, Yoan Vaillant, and five other operators will be handed down on February 3-4, 2025.
Other defendants in the case
Eight citizens have already been arrested for their involvement in the activities of two major pirate online services that caused multi-million dollar damage to American film studios and television companies. The names of the accused are Christopher Lee Dallman (36), Darryl Polo (36, also known by the online pseudonym djppimp), Douglas Courson (59), Philip Garcia (37), Jared Edwards (38), Peter Hubert (61), Yoani Vaillant and Luis Villarino (40). They are accused of operating the pirate streaming service Jetflicks from an office in Las Vegas, providing access to streaming and downloading films, series and TV shows without the permission of the copyright holders through a paid subscription.
The five defendants were convicted in June 2024. Christopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaureki, and Peter Huber were convicted of criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann, however, had a longer rap sheet, including three additional counts of copyright infringement and two counts of money laundering by concealment.
All but Dallmann face up to five years in prison. Dallmann faces a much higher sentence of up to 48 years in prison for the additional money laundering charges.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Jetflicks’ automation scripts ran nonstop, scanning the internet’s most popular pirate sites, such as The Pirate Bay, RARBG, altHUB, and Nzbplanet, for content that could be hosted on Jetflicks for paying subscribers. The pirate theater regularly found ways to post episodes of TV shows within a day of their first airing. The court found that the operation affected every TV show owner in the United States, costing the industry millions.
Tens of thousands of users paid Jetflicks for subscriptions. The case is considered the largest in the history of online piracy in terms of the amount of stolen content. Experts believe that those involved in running the site made tens of millions in subscriptions.
source : https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/18/j...onviction/
The Case
A federal grand jury in the United States has indicted a group of people who conspired to violate copyright law, The Register reports. After five years of grueling trials and a two-week trial that recently concluded, the lead developer of Jetflicks faces a long prison sentence.
Yoany Vaillant, a 43-year-old Cuban national who was a permanent resident of the United States, played a key role in the operation of the Jetflicks website. Vaillant at the time claimed that Jetflicks hosted more than 183,000 episodes of television shows for streaming and downloading, more than currently exist on any major streaming service. The defendant, who was found guilty of one count of conspiracy to commit criminal copyright infringement, became the eighth and final defendant to be convicted in the case. Vaillant faces a possible prison term of up to 10 years, a fine of the amount provided for in this section, or both if the act constituted a felony. The illegal
distribution network reached tens of thousands of American users, and the pirates had a lot to offer: Jetflicks is known to have bragged about having more than 183,200 titles in its catalog, mostly episodes of popular television series. Jetflicks operated for 12 years, from its launch in 2007 until it was shut down by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in 2019. At its peak, the service offered more than 10,500 movies and 183,000 TV episodes, collected from legal platforms (including Netflix, Hulu, and Amazon Prime) using automated scripts.
Vaillant, like Jetflicks, was based in Las Vegas and had 15 years of experience as an IT developer and was proficient in 27 programming languages. He worked at Jetflicks for just four and a half months, but during that time, prosecutors say, he made significant contributions to the site. Specifically, Vaillant fixed bugs related to the extensive automated processes used by Jetflicks, such as downloading, processing, synchronizing, uploading, and streaming the site’s catalog.
Yoani Vaillant was one of eight people indicted in 2019 for playing a key role in the success of Jetflicks, including two other software developers, Darryl Polo and Luis Villarino. Polo was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison, while Villarino was sentenced to one year and one day. Polo
was given the longer sentence because of additional charges beyond criminal copyright infringement, including money laundering and operating iStreamitall, a separate illegal streaming site. At some point, Darryl Polo split with his Jetflicks partners to create his own pirate service, iStreamItAll (ISIA), which not only had nearly 116,000 TV episodes in its catalog, but also more than 10,000 feature films, according to court records. ISIA operated on the same principle as Jetflicks, a paid subscription service in the United States and Canada. The service positioned itself as the largest catalog of streaming content - it had more than any of the legal platforms, be it Netflix, Hulu, Vudu or Amazon Prime. Both pirate services worked on various types of devices, platforms and software, and were compatible with almost all operating systems (OS), smartphones, tablets, game consoles, digital media players, streaming TV boxes and web browsers.
“The defendants conspired to operate an online streaming IT service that illegally reproduced and distributed thousands of copyrighted television programs for their own profit. This case is another example of our commitment to combating intellectual property theft and holding those who violate intellectual property laws accountable,” said Jason Frierson, U.S. Attorney for the District of Nevada, after the trial.
According to Frierson, after Jetflicks began to receive legal complaints and problems with payment service providers, the operators tried to hide the nature of the IT service by renaming it JetFlix, a platform that was supposedly intended for streaming content. As it turned out later, this did not help.
The sentence for the programmer of the pirate cinema Jetflicks, Yoan Vaillant, and five other operators will be handed down on February 3-4, 2025.
Other defendants in the case
Eight citizens have already been arrested for their involvement in the activities of two major pirate online services that caused multi-million dollar damage to American film studios and television companies. The names of the accused are Christopher Lee Dallman (36), Darryl Polo (36, also known by the online pseudonym djppimp), Douglas Courson (59), Philip Garcia (37), Jared Edwards (38), Peter Hubert (61), Yoani Vaillant and Luis Villarino (40). They are accused of operating the pirate streaming service Jetflicks from an office in Las Vegas, providing access to streaming and downloading films, series and TV shows without the permission of the copyright holders through a paid subscription.
The five defendants were convicted in June 2024. Christopher Dallmann, Douglas Courson, Felipe Garcia, Jared Jaureki, and Peter Huber were convicted of criminal copyright infringement. Dallmann, however, had a longer rap sheet, including three additional counts of copyright infringement and two counts of money laundering by concealment.
All but Dallmann face up to five years in prison. Dallmann faces a much higher sentence of up to 48 years in prison for the additional money laundering charges.
According to the U.S. Department of Justice, Jetflicks’ automation scripts ran nonstop, scanning the internet’s most popular pirate sites, such as The Pirate Bay, RARBG, altHUB, and Nzbplanet, for content that could be hosted on Jetflicks for paying subscribers. The pirate theater regularly found ways to post episodes of TV shows within a day of their first airing. The court found that the operation affected every TV show owner in the United States, costing the industry millions.
Tens of thousands of users paid Jetflicks for subscriptions. The case is considered the largest in the history of online piracy in terms of the amount of stolen content. Experts believe that those involved in running the site made tens of millions in subscriptions.
source : https://www.theregister.com/2024/11/18/j...onviction/
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