MUMBAI: The Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA) has filed a lawsuit in the federal court in Los Angeles against Pullmylink.com.

The MPAA says that the site facilitates copyright infringement on the Internet. Sites like Pullmylink contribute to and profit from massive copyright infringement by identifying, posting, organizing, and indexing links to infringing content found on the Internet that consumers can then view on-demand when
visiting these sites, the MPAA states.

MPAA executive VP and director of worldwide anti-piracy operations John Malcolm says, “Pullmylink.com and sites like it are a one-stop shop for copyright infringement. We have filed several other similar suits and will continue to do so in order to hold operators accountable for their illegal activities. Profiting from the theft of other people’s creative works is illegal and we have every intention of shutting this, and sites like it, down for good”.

Pullmylink and similar illegal sites rely on advertisers to maintain their operations and profit handsomely from a seemingly endless stream of third-party advertising pitches, according to the MPAA. With servers located in Scottsdale, Arizona, Pullmylink averages over 12,000 unique daily visitors who view over 39,000 pages of content per day.

This is the seventh lawsuit filed on behalf of the Hollywood movie studios against websites like Pullmylink. Previous lawsuits were filed against: peekvid.com, youtvpc.com,
showstash.com, cinematube.net, ssupload.com, and videohybrid.com.

The worldwide motion picture industry, including foreign and domestic producers, distributors, theaters, video stores and pay-per-view operators lost $18.2 billion in 2005 as a
result of piracy – over $7 billion of which is attributed to Internet piracy and more than $11 billion attributed to hard goods piracy including bootlegging and illegal copying.