Hollywood giants sue Chinese movie website

January 4, 2008

Five Hollywood studios have filed a lawsuit against a Chinese movie website for illegally providing film copies to an Internet café in Shanghai.

20th Century Fox, Walt Disney Pictures, Paramount Pictures, Columbia Pictures and Universal Pictures have jointly sued Jeboo.com and an Internet cafe in Shanghai to No.2 Intermediate People’s Court, saying the two defendants had distributed several popular Hollywood movies to public without their permission, which infringed their copyright.

The studios are demanding an apology, cease of the movie piracy and 3.2 million yuan (over 432,000 U.S. dollars) in compensation.

The court hearing is set to be held on December 29.

They claimed that Jeboo.com provided its software to the Internet café, enabling users to download or view 13 Hollywood movies, including Night at the Museum, X-Men 2, and Pirates of the Caribbean 2. Jeboo.com’s activity was abetting and assisting the Internet cafe’s copyright infringing activities.

Jeboo.com, China’s largest online movie theater, owns the copyright of approximate 30,000 movies. Established in 2004, it is the first broadband movie provider in China.