Man sentenced to jail for running pirated-video platform

A man was sentenced to three and a half years in prison and fined 1.5 million yuan (about 234,551 US dollars) Monday for running the pirated-video platform YYeTs.com. The platform lets users stream and download pirated copies of movies and TV shows.

The sentence was passed at the No.3 intermediate people's court in Shanghai.

The court held that since 2018, Liang Yongping founded two companies and hired several persons to develop and operate the website and apps of YYeTs.com. They downloaded unauthorized videos from foreign websites, translated the videos into Chinese, and uploaded the subtitled videos to their servers for dissemination without the authorization of the copyright owners.

They made illegal profits by charging membership and advertising fees and selling portable hard drives, storing these pirated videos.

The court heard that YYeTs.com posted a total of 32,824 copies of unauthorized videos on its website and apps, accumulating 6.83 million members.

From January 2018 to January 2021, their illegal income totaled more than 12 million yuan. On January 6, 2021, Liang was arrested in his residence.

The court said Liang, who played a leading role in the case, infringed on the copyright of the owners and shall be punished under the law. Given that Liang voluntarily confessed to the crimes and paid part of the fine in advance, he was granted leniency.