📰 New article from TorrentFreak
Chinese Court Jails Aiyifan Operator, U.S. Judge Won’t Transfer Pirate Site’s Domains
### The Piracy Crackdown: A Tale of Two Courts
If you’ve ever spent a late night hunting for free streaming sites, you might want to look elsewhere. The legal hammer is falling on Aiyifan, the massive pirate platform serving Chinese-speaking audiences worldwide.
The news is coming from two very different directions. In China, the consequences are personal: one of the site’s key operators, Wang Jianyang, has been sentenced to four and a half years in prison after a court ruled he played a major role in providing the technical backbone for the platform.
Meanwhile, in a Florida courtroom, the battle is purely financial. The streaming giant iQIYI sued for a staggering $196 million in damages. However, the judge wasn’t buying the massive price tag. After reviewing the evidence, the court handed down a much more modest—though still significant—judgment of roughly $1.96 million.
The “win” for iQIYI is a bit of a mixed bag, though. While they secured the cash judgment, the judge refused to hand over Aiyifan’s domain names. Why? Because the sites host a mix of infringing and legal content, and the court ruled that a total takeover would be too broad.
The takeaway: The operators are feeling the heat, but the pirate sites aren’t quite ready to go dark just yet.