MPAA Lists The World's Most Notorious Markets For Illegal Film Distribution

The Motion Picture Association of America has provided the U.S. Trade Representative with a listing of the world’s most 'notorious' marketplaces for the distribution of illegal film and television shows.

MPAA provided the information in response to USTR’s request for submissions from the public on notorious markets outside of the United States. The MPAA list includes peer-to -peer networks, Bit Torrent portals, infringing download and streaming hubs, linking websites and newsgroups, as well as physical markets located in the Ukraine, Australia, Canada, China, Indonesia, Ireland, Brazil, Russia, Thailand, Mexico and India.

"The American motion picture and television industry is a major U.S. employer that supports approximately 2 million jobs and over $104 billion in total wages in all 50 states, " said MPAA Chairman and CEO, Senator Chris Dodd. "The rogue overseas marketplaces highlighted in the filing undermine the people who work hard to create the movies and TV shows audiences love, and jeopardize the billions of dollars they contribute to the U.S. economy. The MPAA commends the USTR’s commitment to protect and enforce intellectual property rights abroad and, in so doing, protect U.S. jobs."

The sites identified in this year’s filing were identified in part because they make available to downloaders unauthorized copies of high-quality, recently-released content and in some cases, coordinate the actual upload and download of that content:

Extratorrent.com - Ukraine, BitTorrent indexing website
Kickass.to - Canada.
QVOD - China. QVOD, or “Kuaibo.com”, is a P2P protocol and application used by Chinese linking sites to distribute infringing copies of copyrighted movies and television shows.
Rutracker.org - Russia, BitTorrent portal
Thepiratebay.sx - Sweden, BitTorrent tracker
Torrentz.eu - Canada, one of the oldest and most popular BitTorrent websites on the Internet
Xunlei.com - China. It features a proprietary, high speed P2P file sharing system that distributes copies of motion picture and television content.

MPAA also listed infringing download and streaming hubs, which include what are sometimes referred to as "cyberlockers". These are types of hosting sites that allow users to upload and distribute files:

Extabit.com - Netherlands.
Netload.in - Germany.
Nowvideo.sx - Netherlands. Nowvideo.sx is one of the top streaming cyberlocker sites
Putlocker.com - United Kingdom.
RapidGator.net - Russia.
Uploaded.net - Netherlands.
VKontakte- Russia. VKontakte, or VK.com, is the leading social networking site in Russia and Russian speaking territories.

The list also includes "linking websites", which aggregate, organize and index links to files stored on other sites:

Cuevana.tv - Argentina.
Primewire.ag - Estonia.
Filmesonlinegratis.net - Brazil.
Free-tv-video-online.me -Czech Republic.
Megafilmeshd.net - Brazil.
Movie4k.to - Romania.
Seriesyonkis.com - Spain
Solarmovie.so - Latvia
Telona.org - Sweden
yets.com - China

Newsgroups originated as text-based Internet discussions forums. Over time, newsgroup technology evolved from transmission of text only messages for purposes of general Internet based discussions to allow for the transmission of large media files. Newsgroup users post messages to a news server which then shares that message with other participating news servers around the world. This worldwide collection of servers is kn own as the Usenet, a high-speed direct download service offering access to a searchable global file exchange network.

Today, illegal copies of movies and television shows are commonly posted in newsgroups for download by users around the world. MPAA lists Usenext.com, Germany.

Myriad physical markets located around the world offer consumers burned or pressed infringing optical discs. According to MPAA, examples of notorious physical markets include: