Dish Sues Data Center Operator Over Piracy

Virtual Systems (VS) provides the servers and networks that multiple video pirate streaming sites employ, EchoStar's Dish Network said in a federal complaint last week against the Ukrainian company and CEO Vyacheslav Smyrnov. Dish told the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Washington (docket 2:24-cv-01683) that it had asked VS -- which operates a data center and servers in the Seattle area -- on "hundreds of occasions" to stop copyright infringement of nearly two dozen international channels for which Dish owns exclusive broadcast rights in the U.S. The plaintiff said VS advertises that its policy is to not react to Digital Millennium Copyright Act take-down notices "unless the situation conditions force us to." As such, it didn't respond to Dish's infringement notices. Dish said VS was materially contributing to and inducing copyright infringement. It asked for a permanent injunction and damages of $150,000 for each work infringed. VS didn't comment Friday.