Streamiz Authority gets 2 Years imprisonment & €83.6 Million Fine
Published on February 21, 2018
A 41-year-old administrator of popular streaming pirate site Streamiz charged over commercial counterfeiting in France. For the damages caused to Disney, 20th Century Fox, and Warner Bros group, a French man sentenced to two years in jail and a fine worth of €83.6 Million, says the court. During the two year period of time before they accused have earned an estimation of 150,000 euros from the advertising agency.
Earlier in 2011, the Streamiz site has 250,000 unique visitors per day and takes the pride of world's second popular pirate streaming site in France. As per their note, the movies listed on their site doesn't belong to them and not hosting its own content.
There are more likely to offer around 40,000 films to their customers and making a decent revenue from it. This draws the attention of entertainment industry towards them. Then the company named National Federation of Film Distributors (FNDF) raised the complaint against the pirate site Streamiz in 2009. After hearing the case, the investigator starts searching the site admin locality. Later, they found the man contributing as authority to Streamiz is in the Hauts-de-Seine region of France. This made the officials to imprison the suspect in October 2011. While he was arrested, his backpack contains €30,000 in cash packed in socks, says AFP.
The court ordered him to make his presence without fail to hear about the case and the further procedure. Surprisingly, he was not there while the case hearing. Following his action, he was ordered to put in prison for 2 years and asked to pay him a fine of 83.6 million euros for the copyright infringement offenses and causing damage to the Disney, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros and SACEM, the Society of Authors, Composers and Music Publishers.
The Secretary-General of SACEM told that "This is a clear case of commercial counterfeiting” based on a “very structured” system. He also adds and believes that his sentence "sends a very clear message: there will be no impunity for pirates."
