Torrent news: Lawsuit that could end YTS continues despite reported settlement efforts

YTS is facing a lawsuit filed by studios known for producing movies starring Bruce Willis, Ryan Reynolds, and Jason Statham. But it was recently reported that representatives of YTS are seeking to deal with the case through a settlement.

The plaintiffs composed of seven production companies filed their lawsuit against YTS and YIFY domains in April. If the district court of Hawaii eventually rules in favor of the plaintiffs, the repercussions could be severe for the very popular torrent sites.

Movie companies seek to end YTS

The court could rule to cease the operations of YTS and issue a notice of injunction internet service providers, search engines, and domain hosts to blacklist the torrent site per the lawsuit’s prayer. Meanwhile, the latest updates on the case revealed that YTS actually did not ignore the complaint and even communicated with the plaintiffs’ lawyers offering a settlement.

The plaintiffs as represented by their attorney, Kerry Culpepper, previously asked the court to issue a subpoena to domain service providers to reveal the administrators of the torrent site. This request was denied earlier denied pushing the movie companies to file a motion for reconsideration revealing YTS’ efforts to settle with studios.

Settlement might not push through

In the motion, Culpepper informed the court that a certain “Mr. Segaran” contacted his law office a week after the lawsuit was filed and conveyed YTS’ settlement offers. The parties communicated through emails until May 23 where Segaran reportedly assured Culpepper that the movies produced by the plaintiffs “permanently removed” from the torrent site.

However, the complainant alleged that the movies are still up for download after learning that the titles are listed as “private content” to another domain, YTS.LT. “The new website yts.lt once again apparently allows users to download torrent files of Plaintiffs’ motion pictures, but only if the user creates a YTS account and logs in,” the plaintiffs argued. Meanwhile, TorrentFreak reported despite setting up an account at YTS.lt, the plaintiffs’ movies are still listed as private, thus, remaining unavailable for download.

Based on the data from SimilarWeb, the YTS.lt has only been active in May. But it still proves YTS’ popularity because, in just about two months, the domain already gathered more than 94.4 million visits.