Fugitive administrator French streaming site has to pay 84 million euros

A court in France has ordered the operator of the French streaming website Streamiz to pay damages of 83.6 million euros. The 41-year-old man was also sentenced to two years in prison. The man is on the run.

Le Point writes on the basis of a report from the AFP news agency that the man was sentenced in his absence. According to the lawyer representing copyright organization Sacem, Streamiz, the website that the 41-year-old man managed, was the third most popular streaming site in France in 2011, with 250,000 visitors a day.

The amount of 83.6 million euros has to be paid to several parties who filed the lawsuit, including Disney, 20th Century Fox, Warner Bros, two professional associations and Sacem, the French association of authors, composers and music publishers.

Streamiz is said to have offered about forty thousand films. They were not hosted by the website, but could be viewed via streams. In total, the films on the website are said to have been viewed more than five hundred million times. The AFP message states that the website is now offline, but several streaming sites of the same name are still online. There may be other administrators behind it.

The case has been going on since 2009, when the National Federation of Film Distributors filed suit against the site. In 2011, the administrator was arrested while leaving his home with nearly $30,000 cash in socks hidden in a backpack. He was later subpoenaed, but did not appear at the hearing. Since then, the man has been on the run and a warrant for his arrest has been issued.

Research would show that the administrator has earned 150,000 euros in advertising revenue through the site in just under two years. According to the director of Sacem, the conviction of the man is a clear signal that there is “no impunity” for piracy. The man has been convicted of, among other things, contrefaçon, or copyright infringement.