A federal grand jury indicted eight people with conspiring to violate federal criminal copyright law by running two illegal streaming services in the U.S.
According to the indictment, the people charged ran Jetflicks, a subscription-based online service, with more than 183,200 different TV episodes. One of the defendants left Jetflicks to create another website based in Las Vegas, called iStreamItAll, with 115,849 different TV episodes and 10,511 movies. Jetflicks allegedly obtained the content from torrent and Usenet sites.
The services resulted in a loss of millions of dollars to copyright owners of television shows and movies that were streamed. In addition to being available online, the two services were specifically designed to work across different devices, platforms and software, the U.S. Department of Justice said Aug. 27.
The services allegedly offered more TV shows and movies than streaming content providers like Netflix Inc., Hulu LLC and Amazon.com Inc.'s Prime Video, the DOJ added.
