The Motion Picture Association of America is doing a happy dance right now at the news that two online services that distribute movies and TV have been shuttered: Popcorn Time, which streams content from torrent sites and is sometimes called “Netflix for pirates,” and YTS, a site that has pirated editions of movies using BitTorrent software.

The MPAA said in a statement that it was legal action brought by its member studios that took down the two sites: a court order in Canada shuttered Popcorn Time and another effort in New Zealand closed YTS, reports the AFP.

Canada’s federal court issued an injunction on Oct. 16 requiring web operators to close down Popcorn Time, which had an estimated 1.5 million visitors in July. YTS was believed to have had about 3.4 million visitors as of August, and was told to shut things down in an interim injunction from New Zealand’s High Court.

Those two sites “enabled acts of copyright infringement worldwide on a massive scale,” the film industry trade group said.

“Popcorn Time and YTS are illegal platforms that exist for one clear reason: to distribute stolen copies of the latest motion pictures and television shows without compensating the people who worked so hard to make them,” said Chris Dodd, MPAA’s chairman and chief executive.

This isn’t the first time Popcorn Time has been involved in a piracy lawsuit: in September, Millennium Films sued 16 users of the service for allegedly using it to download the movie Survivor. Millennium is not a member of the MPAA, however.

‘Netflix for pirates’ shut down by courts [AFP]

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