Founder NinjaVideo site pleads guilty after ‘Operation In Our Sites’ investigation

Last Friday, the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced Matthew Smith, founder of the video streaming and download site NinjaVideo.net, plead guilty of conspiracy and copyright infringement before the U.S. District judge in the Eastern District of Virginia. Smith also admitted that he made agreements with online advertising organizations to generate income for the website, and he collected more than $500,000. The guilty plea results in an automatic conviction and Smith has waived his right to appeal. The maximum penalty for which Smith plead guilty to is five years in prison and a $250,000 fine. He will be sentenced in December. The four other NinjaVideo defendants, scheduled for a jury trial February next year, are also suspected of conspiracy and several copyright-related offenses.

Smith admitted he designed many of the operational elements of the NinjaVideo.net that enabled millions of visitors to illegally download infringing copies of movies and television programs in high-quality formats. Many of the movies offered on the website were still playing in theaters or had not yet been released. While visitors to the website were permitted to download infringing content for free, they were also invited to make donations. In case the users donated, they could gain access to private forum boards that contained a wider range of infringing material and could request specific infringing content.

Smith’s guilty plea is the first pursuant to “Operation In Our Sites” a law enforcement initiative set up by the ICE to protect consumers by targeting counterfeiting and illegal file sharing over the internet. During such an operation the ICE seizes domain names that include sites where copyright protected content or counterfeits are illegally distributed. In this case the authorities (ICE, the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center, Homeland Security Investigations) did not only seize the site’s domain names, but also conducted a criminal investigation into the people involved.

Reference: GovDelivery