Initial Results Demonstrate Effectiveness of Partnership with Donuts on “Trusted Notifier” Program

At the MPAA, we believe that cooperation with responsible players in the online ecosystem, including advertisers, ISPs, and payment processors, is one of the best ways to promote lawful access to creative works and reduce online piracy. That’s why in February, we at MPAA were so pleased to announce a first-of-its-kind partnership with Donuts Inc., the largest operator of nearly 200 new domain name extensions, including .MOVIE and .THEATER.

Under the agreement, the MPAA is treated as a “Trusted Notifier” for the purpose of reporting large-scale pirate websites registered in a Donuts-operated domains, according to a strict set of standards, and Donuts investigates them to determine what actions, if any, are warranted.

Today, Donuts posted a blog entry to “review some real world examples of the referral system” now that the program has been in existence for several months, including details on actions taken against several sites that were referred by MPAA and determined by Donuts to be infringing.

Donuts concluded:

As we said in February, this is a landmark development in the continuing battle against pervasive illegal online piracy. Donuts has been extremely careful in balancing the rights of its end-user customers along with those of copyright holders. We continue to believe this is a useful and efficient manner for addressing blatant online piracy, and we encourage others in the domain name community to follow suit with similar programs. Our hope is that this program will be a pre-cursor to a more streamlined industry-wide process that all interested parties can develop collaboratively.

We share Donuts’ enthusiasm and positive evaluation of the constructive and cooperative voluntary relationship that we are building together.  Furthermore, we share the same hope for future collaboration with more operators of domain name registries and registrars.  Last month, we announced a similar agreement with Radix, a Dubai based domain name registry operator, and we look forward to exploring additional opportunities with other potential partners in this space.