Pirate Jailed for 'All-in-one' Movie Streaming Site
An illegal streaming service offering more than a hundred thousand television episodes and ten thousand movies with no restrictions on device or location has been closed down. That's because the two men operating it have both pleaded guilty to copyright infringement.
iStreamItAll was a subscription service that - had it been legal - would arguably have been the best value on the market, offering a bigger range than four leading legal services combined. Indeed, its chief Darryl Polo actively marketed it to customers of Netflix, Amazon Prime and similar services as a better option with a wider choice. (Sources: gizmodo.co.uk)
Another big selling point was that the services worked on a particularly wide range of devices including smart televisions and games consoles. It's not clear if, or how clearly, he explained the service was far from above board.
Pirate Sites Raided
Polo's operation was technically impressive while ethically reprehensible. He and colleague Luis Villarino developed software that automatically searched online for pirate websites, downloaded video files of TV shows and movies, put them into a standard video format, indexed the episode details, and them made them available to their streaming customers.
As well running iStreamitAll, the two men both worked on a similar illegal service called Jetflicks. Polo admitted he earned more than a million dollars from his illegal activities, though it's not clear if this is revenue or profit.
Sentencing Delayed Till 2020
Polo has now plead guilty to five offenses: one count each of four different variations of copyright infringement and one of money laundering. Villano has plead guilty to conspiracy to commit copyright infringement. Both men took part in a plea agreement. (Source: justice.gov)
Both men will be sentenced in March, following scheduled trials in February for six other defendants in the same case.
What's Your Opinion?
Are you surprised people pay money for what they should have realized was an illegal streaming service? Is this evidence that customers are hurt by online TV and movies being split across so many streaming services or just proof that people are greedy? Is the sheer number of legal streaming services sustainable or will the bubble burst?
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Comments
Sheer stupidity
It's amazing that some people think they can get away with blatant copyright infringement, especially on a scale such as this - and not expect that they'll be caught. Speaking from experience, I've had my content (articles and eBooks I've written) ripped off this website and placed on other sites with: no request for permission to share, no credit to the author, no referral link, and my name completely removed from the article. There's a grand notion that "everything on the Internet is free," you can "take what you want," and even claim credit for someone else's hard work.
I'm looking forward to hearing what the sentence will be.
Re Streaming
I see the handwriting on the wall now.
It's 2025 and everyone has "cut the cord" and is streaming TV. The only issue is they're paying as much or more than they used to from cable or Dish because of all the "walled garden" services that collectively cost as much or more than the cable or dish services used to.
Disney, Apple, Hulu, Netflix...et al. they all have exclusive programs or channels. If you want 'em ya gotta pay for 'em.
Kodi
I wonder if they will able to get at Kodi. I know that it is open source software but it is probably one of THE most used software programs to watch pirated movies etc...... I will probably be slammed for this because it is so popular. I know that it is not centralized but the long arm can reach pretty far and piracy is...well... piracy.
Kodi
Kodi is nothing more than an open source project used for multimedia. The issue with the piracy are the addons and services that plug into Kodi, but not Kodi itself. That said, almost every local place in town that sells a Kodi box also sells programming "packages," such as IPTV, etc. These are the people that are committing the crimes, as well as the places offering the illicit services. This isn't any different than when they used to reprogram satellite cards for a fee in order to gain access to unlimited television.
Just following our political
Just following our political leaders examples.