14 DAY TRIAL // Two days ago, we reported on two lawsuits brought by the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) against the operators of Popcorn Time and YTS (formerly known as YIFY).
First, the MPAA filed a lawsuit against three Popcorn Time developers living in Canada while a second lawsuit followed a few days later against the YTS.to site operator and alleged YIFY mastermind, an unnamed person residing in New Zeeland.
The MPAA obtained court injunctions in both lawsuits and used them to bring down the two services.
According to more information coming from NZ Herald, a news agency from New Zealand, the lawsuit the MPAA filed against YTS' operator seems to have already ended, with the two parties having reached an out-of-court settlement.
Settlement details are secret, for now
The details of the agreement have not been made public for now, but the NZ Herald has managed to find out that YTS' owner is living in a house in suburban Auckland, New Zealand's largest city (not its capital).
Common sense says that if the unnamed YTS operator does not want to go to jail or pay huge financial damages, they'll likely have to surrender insider information on YTS' internal structure and modus operandi.
Since the movie release group has multiple members in many countries, with many of them suspected to be living in Russian and Eastern Europe, the group's leader may try to buy their freedom by giving up their former collaborators.
The MPAA now owns the yts.to domain
In the meantime, TorrentFreak reports that the MPAA is now the legal owner of the yts.to domain, which the site's operator has transferred today.
This is not the first pirating website the MPAA has shut down. Previously, the organization successfully disassembled sites like isoHunt, Hotfile, Megaupload, and TorrentSpy.
All of the above portals were shut down after years of litigation. We might be seeing the MPAA taking a new approach to closing pirate sites by entering legal settlements and avoiding dragging out cases for years and years in court.