The U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has announced the shut down of nine movie piracy sites, the first sites in a major crackdown from federal officials.
The anti-piracy initiative is dubbed “Operation in Our Sites,” and is aimed at taking down sites that stream or offer downloads of films that are currently in theaters.
Movies-links.TV, nowmovies.com, thepiratecity.org, filespump.com, planetmoviez.com, zml.org, tvshack.net, ninjavideo.net and thisninja.net were all taken down.
Each site generated revenue from ads and some accept donations. All assets from the sites were seized, including PayPal and advertising accounts.
ICE president John Morton says the amount of illegal movie sites is rising rapidly, with organized crime behind a number of the bigger sites.
Morton added that the sites taken down combined for “millions and millions of hits on a monthly basis.”
Result for: assets
According to the NYPost, Blockbuster is on its last legs, and is looking for an equity partner as it runs completely out of money.
Citing insider sources, Blockbuster needs $213.5 million in cash to pay off loans and interest for 2010, with a similar amount coming due in 2011. According to latest financials, the company only has about $211 million in cash, and is expected to lose as much as $120 million in 2010, leaving them with no ability to pay off the loans unless they sell more of their assets, or complete larger cost cutting measures.
After the report, Blockbuster CEO Jim Keyes disagreed with the assessment: “All your numbers are wrong. They bear no resemblance to any materials we have in the market.” Any talks with private equity firms are for “strategic alternatives,” not to add capital infusions.
In February, Blockbuster said they owed $105 million in interest payments for 2010, but did not add what they needed to pay in principal.
Result for: assets
MySpace has announced that it has acquired certain assets from online music service Imeem in an effort to expand their streaming music offerings.
The deal was completed for under $1 million USD, says the WSJ.
Imeem is a streaming music service that allows users to create playlists which can be shared with other Imeem users or via social networking sites. Imeem has raised over $25 million in venture capital since its launch in 2003 and makes most of its revenue through ad sales and the sales of merchandise such as ringtones.
“MySpace Music and Imeem share a common vision and commitment to further enabling the socialization of content across the Web,” added MySpace CEO Owen Van Natta. “This deal will allow us to leverage Imeem’s industry leading technology and over time, meaningfully integrate their products into the MySpace Music experience.”
