A Coalition of Hollywood Studios Demands Damages of $16.35 Million From Pirate IPTV Owner
- A persistent and boisterous pirate IPTV services provider is now cornered with a $16 million motion.
- Copyright holders who settled with him previously are fed up with new platform launches and want him stopped for good.
- The man was openly promoting his platforms on social media and even demonstrated his riches from the illegal operations.
Jason Tusa, the owner and operator of several pirate IPTV platforms such as ‘Area 51’, ‘Singularity Media,’ ‘Digital UniCorn Media,’ and ‘Altered Carbon,’ is facing a massive lawsuit from a coalition of Hollywood studios, including Warner, Universal, Paramount, and Sony, as well as Netflix and Amazon, who are collectively asking the court to approve statutory damage compensation of $16.35 million, plus another $332,600 in attorney fees.
Tusa was allegedly shutting down his IPTV service every time the rightsholders threatened him or even reached a settlement agreement and then proceeded by launching a new one under a new branding. This went on for a while, but the investigators of the copyright holders got to the same identity every time, so the infringement never really stopped.
On the contrary, Tusa and his accomplices continued to brag about their services and their “amazing” content packages on social media, promoting their illegal platforms everywhere. They also posted videos that showcased how they wired cabled boxes and intercepted legitimately sourced broadcasts to redistribute them to their subscribers.
The man was even boasting about his riches, showcasing luxury cars that used vanity plates inspired by his IPTV service brands, so he didn’t have any regard for hiding any part of his illegal business, let alone having any refrains for engaging in pirate operations again. When the heat increased, Tusa rinsed and repeated.
The total amount of over $16 million is calculated as the sum of the damages for willful infringement of $150,000 per copyright work, so 109 items have been identified and exhibited to the U.S. Court at the Central District of California, which is the one that handles the case. Whether or not this will be approved and for what amount exactly, we will find out on October 18, 2021. The motion is of the default judgment kind as Jason Tusa has failed to appear in court and defend himself in last year’s motions that asked for a permanent injunction.