WASHINGTON — Hollywood studios have won a copyright case against Hotfile Corp. after a Florida judge on Tuesday ordered the file-hosting website to pay $80 million in damages.
The court also ordered Hotfile to shut down within 20 days unless the website uses “state-of-the-art content identification and filtering technology” to weed out pirated copies of movies and other material that users upload.
The judgment, by U.S. District Judge Kathleen Williams of the Southern District of Florida, said that Hotfile and its principal, Anton Titov, had waived their right to appeal.
Motion Picture Association of America CEO Chris Dodd said in a statement that the judgment was another step “toward protecting an Internet that works for everyone.”
The court found Hotfile liable for copyright infringement in August and rejected its “safe harbor” defense under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. The court also found Titov personally liable for infringement.
Hotfile attorney Valentin Gurvits declined to comment.
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