📰 New article from TorrentFreak
Court Dismisses DISH’s $25 Million IPTV Piracy Lawsuit Against UK Hosting Provider
Court Tosses DISH’s $25M Lawsuit Against UK Hosting Provider Over Pirate IPTV
DISH Network and its anti-piracy allies have been on a legal tear targeting pirate IPTV services—but a recent courtroom setback shows jurisdictional limits matter.
DISH sued UK-based hosting provider Innetra PC last year, alleging it knowingly aided major pirate streams like Lemo TV and Kemo IPTV—and ignored hundreds of takedown requests. The $25 million suit claimed Innetra forfeited DMCA safe harbor protections by lacking a designated agent and repeat-infringer policy.
But Innetra fought back, arguing the U.S. court lacked jurisdiction: it had virtually no U.S. footprint—just two brief American customers (one paying $682 for two months), no U.S. servers, and contracts with European arms of NTT and Lumen, not their U.S. branches.
A federal judge in California agreed, dismissing the case without prejudice after finding DISH couldn’t prove Innetra “purposefully directed” activities at the U.S. The court stressed that just because pirates used Innetra’s infrastructure to reach American viewers doesn’t make Innetra subject to U.S. jurisdiction.
Still, DISH can refile—or sue in the UK, as Innetra suggested. (Bonus context: A similar case against Ukraine’s Virtual Systems ended in a default judgment after they didn’t respond.)
Meanwhile, DISH keeps pushing: just last month, it filed another $21M suit—this time against a crew allegedly impersonating Vince Gilligan to promote pirate service DMTN.