Viacom Inc.’s Paramount Pictures, Walt Disney Co. and other members of the Motion Picture Association of America settled a lawsuit against a Web site they accused of illegally posting copyrighted movies, Bloomberg News reports.
Cinematube.net, operated by Georgia resident Tien “Timothy” Tran, will pay $1.38 million to the companies and admit violating copyrights as part of the settlement filed May 2 in federal court in Los Angeles.
The companies, including units of Time Warner Cos., News Corp. and Sony Corp., sued in September, seeking monetary damages and a court order barring illegal postings. Piracy cost the global film industry $18.2 billion in 2005, with more than $7 billion attributed to bootleg copies posted on the Internet, according to the Los Angeles-based MPAA.
Cinematube.net illegally posted and organized links to copyrighted films, some of them still in theaters, for viewing on demand, the MPAA said in the suit.
