CotoMovies shut down: As user info gets exposed, authorities may come after some

Piracy is a theft that can cost you an entire business, agreed? Well, at least makers of the popular movie or media streaming app CotoMovoies have learned this lesson the hard way.

Past few weeks have been quite stormy for CotoMovies. It all started when Tweakbox – an illicit software distribution service that provides ad-free & pirated versions of apps/games on iOS – took down some of the movie apps after legal pressure from makers of the movies Hellboy & Angel Has Fallen.

CotoMovies, Popcorn Time and MediaBox HD were the ones targeted with this subpoena. But things got worse for CotoMovies. They announced a shutdown following this copyright infringement episode. Here’s a notification that was circulated to users of the app.

While the app’s Twitter account was suspended immediately, few days back, their official website (cotomovies.com) started flashing an apology message from the devs explaining what caused them to shutdown the service along with suggesting users to go for the legal apps to watch such content.

I want to express my sincere regret to the owners of the motion pictures Hellboy and Angel Has Fallen as well as all rights holders for inducing and contributing to copyright infringements by my operation of the app CotoMovies. From this stressful legal experience, I have learned to appreciate the damage apps such as CotoMovies do to those who invest their time, effort and money to create motion pictures. I now plan to fully respect intellectual property laws and strongly urge those who used my app to use legal apps to watch movies.

While that of course wasn’t taken well by users for their fav app was shutting down, what’s more concerning is the app devs further added they’ve agreed to share all user data with the concerned authorities (wait, what???).

To this end, I have agreed to transfer to counsel for the rights holders user data and communications under my possession and control so that they can enforce their valuable intellectual property.

Coming to what could that mean for you, presumably the info that you shared while registering for CotoMovies, is now be in hands of the authorities/filmakers, and they’ll be free to take legal actions against the users as well. Yes you read it right!

This conveys, legal trouble could be coming your way too for using the service to stream content. Well, we’ve explained how using services like ShowBox, MovieBox and other similar apps could cost users a lawsuit. Basically, large corporations going after individual users is rare, but not completely unheard of – anonymous users of the app Popcorn Time have faced something similar.

Going by a report from TorrentFreak – who reached out to the attorney of the two movie companies – the makers “more than likely” plan to go after the CotoMovies app users. At the same time, there’s still no clarity about what kind of user information has been handed over by the dev. So how are the movie makers going to go about this, that remains to be seen.

To sum it up, next time, think twice before signing up for such services, as info shared during that process may drag you to court later. Rest, like always, we’re keeping a continuous tab on all related developments, and will share the relevant with you as and when it catches our sight.

Follow @PiunikaWeb

PiunikaWeb is a unique initiative that mainly focuses on investigative journalism. This means we do a lot of hard work to come up with news stories that are either ‘exclusive,’ ‘breaking,’ or ‘curated’ in nature. Perhaps that’s the reason our work has been picked by the likes of Forbes, Foxnews, Gizmodo, TechCrunch, Engadget, The Verge, Macrumors, and more. Do take a tour of our website to get a feel of our work. And if you like what we do, stay connected with us on Twitter (@PiunikaWeb) and other social media channels to receive timely updates on stories we publish.