The major Hollywood studios had fought and won against similar concepts for years. Similar services like Zediva, which attempted to stream DVDs to users on a one-to-one basis, had been shut down by the courts. A French startup with €71,000 raised on Kickstarter was never going to outmaneuver the Motion Picture Association in court. As coverage from outlets like Variety and TorrentFreak concluded, the concept was legally untenable from the start.
Cheap, deep catalog, permanent ownership. Cons: Requires user effort, legal gray areas, dependent on community size.
One of the most celebrated features of Movieswap Org is its handling of titles. These are movies no longer manufactured by studios—obscure 70s horror, discontinued Criterion Collection editions, or specific transfers of Star Wars that were altered in later releases.
In 2004, a coalition of major movie studios, including 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, and Warner Bros., filed a lawsuit against Movieswap.org. The lawsuit alleged that the site was liable for copyright infringement, as it facilitated the sharing and distribution of pirated movies.
