Luis Villarino and Darryl Polo have been running alternative streaming sites – Jetflicks and iStreamItAll that offers more movies and TV episodes than Amazon.com, Inc. (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Netflix Inc (NASDAQ:NFLX). The FBI investigators have busted the illegal streaming sites.
Two programmers plead guilty
The Los Angeles based programmers – Darryl and Luis have pleaded guilty for running the illegal video streaming sites. iStreamItAll offers more content when compared to Amazon Prime, Vudu, Hulu, and Netflix. The two US-based programmers, are smart to convince the customers in the US to forego the genuine streaming sites such as Netflix and instead choose its video streaming sites.
The US Justice Department commends FBI
The US Justice Department has commended the efforts of the FBI to nab the culprits. iStreamItAll and Jetflicks offer pirated content on various devices that include smart televisions, tablets, smartphones, digital media players, gaming consoles, and other computer systems besides offering to the subscribers over the Internet. The two programmers have urged the people to pay for their streaming services and get more.
The two computer programmers are charged with copyright infringement. They offered 11,000 movies and 118,000 TV episodes through iStreamItAll, which is bigger than Amazon Prime, Hulu, and Netflix. Jetflicks and iStreamItAll command several hundred paid subscribers.
Polo earns over $1 million
Polo is engaged in downloading movies and sites from across the world. He then processes them and streams illegally on iStreamItAll. Polo targeted potential customers through emails to subscribe to his services. Besides working as a programmer at Jetflicks, he also runs other piracy services that include SmackDownOnYou. His earnings from piracy are estimated at over $1 million.
iStreamItAll and Jetflicks have caused massive loss of several million dollars to the movie and TV copyright holders. Apart from copyright infringement, Polo is also charged with criminal distribution of copyrighted work. Luis also works as a programmer for Jetflicks, which uses automated software to reproduce and stream several copyrighted movies and TV shows to paid subscribers. He is also charged with copyright infringement.
In 2015, Reed Hastings, Chief Executive Officer of Netflix, said piracy is its biggest competitor. Piracy is a major concern for streaming companies.
