Freemon defended himself but failed to hire a lawyer for his company, Freemon Technology Industries (FTI). Instead, he responded by filing various motions while refusing to formally answer the copyright infringement complaint.<\/p>\n
With the case not moving forward, the movie companies eventually had enough and requested a default judgment of $18,750,000 in copyright damages.<\/p>\n
Last month, a Texas magistrate judge\u00a0recommended granting<\/a>\u00a0this in full, and this week, the order was formally adopted by U.S. District Judge Sam A. Lindsay.<\/p>\n As\u00a0detailed in our earlier coverage<\/a>, Freemon allegedly operated four unauthorized streaming services: Streaming TV Now, TV Nitro, Instant IPTV, and Cash App IPTV. In addition, he was accused of running a pirate IPTV reseller operation called Live TV Resellers.<\/p>\n \u2018Streaming TV Now\u2019 was the most popular IPTV service, according to the legal paperwork. It first appeared online in 2020 and offers access to 11,000 live channels, as well as on-demand access to over 27,000 movies and 9,000 TV series.<\/p>\n The studios identified a sample of 125 copyrighted works that were available through the IPTV services, including Universal\u2019s Oppenheimer. As damages compensation, the court granted the recommended statutory maximum of $150,000 per work for willful infringement, for a total of $18,750,000.<\/p>\n This judgment amount will continue to grow, as the court approved a 3.51% annual post-judgment interest rate until the amount is paid in full. In addition, the attorneys\u2019 fee award has yet to be determined and will also add to the total.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n In addition to the damages, Judge Lindsay also entered a permanent injunction, which bars Freemon and FTI from reproducing, distributing, or publicly performing any of the plaintiffs\u2019 copyrighted works, and from assisting others in doing so.<\/p>\n The signed injunction also requires the eight domain names to be transferred immeidately to the studios\u2019 control: instantiptv.net, streamingtvnow.com, streamingtvnow.net, tvnitro.net, cashappiptv.com, livetvresellers.com, stncloud.ltd, and stnlive.ltd.<\/p>\n The associated domain registrars have five days to facilitate theese transfers. If they fail to do so, the TLD registries can be ordered to either transfer the domains to a registrar of the studios\u2019 choosing, or place them on registry hold, which would make them inaccessible too.<\/p>\n To address a potential whack-a-mole scenario, the studios can also return to court to add further domains to the injunction, as long as evidence shows Freemon operates them.<\/p>\n All in all, the court order is a clear victory for the movie companies. Whether the defendant will be able to pay over $18 million in damages is another matter. The domain seizure order does not have an immediate effect either, as all the mentioned domains have been offline for a while already.<\/p>\n That said, if Freemon ever attempts to relaunch the services, the movie companies will come prepared.<\/p>\n \u2014<\/em><\/p>\n A copy of the default judgment, signed March 11, at the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, is available\u00a0here (pdf)<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n Source: \u00a0Judge Grants $18,750,000 Judgment<\/h2>\n
![\"default\"](\"https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/images\/default-iptv.png.webp)
<\/picture><\/center> <\/p>\nInjunction Targets Domain Names<\/h2>\n
![\"TorrentFreak\"](\"http:\/\/worldjusticenews.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/11\/torrentfreak.png\")
<\/a> TorrentFreak.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"