The Legal Case Against Scour.com
The country's major motion picture studios and their affiliates, and record companies and leading music publishers are suing Scour.com to protect their copyrighted movies and music from the massive and growing piracy on the Internet resulting from Scour.com willful illegal conduct. In essence, this suit is designed to stop Scour.com from facilitating stealing.

What Scour.com Does
Scour.com knowingly and systematically participates in, facilitates and encourages piracy through its Web site, its proprietary software, and the other infrastructure and tools that it makes available to its tens of thousands of users, including a hub of central computer servers to which users connect and a continuously-updated index of connections to multimedia files. These facilities are all designed to permit users to identify, copy and distribute without permission - in short, steal - the plaintiffs' valuable copyrighted works from the Internet and the computer hard drives of other Scour.com users.

Why It's Illegal
Copyright infringement can occur when someone directly participates in copying, distributing, etc. creative works without the copyright owners' permission. Infringement can also occur when someone contributes to the infringing activity while knowing or having reason to know of the infringement. In this case, Scour.com clearly knows its users are illegally pirating copyrighted material. Thousands of the motion picture titles and music recordings that Scour.com indexes and makes available for copying are copyrighted works - including blockbuster motion pictures like the recently released movies "The Perfect Storm," "Gladiator," and "Mission Impossible II," and the works of well-known recording artists and songwriters - that Scour.com obviously knows are not lawfully available for copying.

A defendant may also be found liable for copyright infringement committed by others. This can occur when a defendant benefits financially from the infringement and fails to prevent the infringement despite its ability to stop it. Courts have held that financial benefit can be shown where the infringing activities enhance the attractiveness of the defendant's business to potential customers. This element is satisfied here: clearly, the opportunity to pirate thousands of popular copyrighted works through Scour.com's facilities makes Scour.com a more attractive service to its users. In turn, the growing number of Scour.com users drawn by this opportunity for piracy makes Scour.com a more attractive place for other businesses to advertise - thereby increasing Scour.com's ability to bring in advertising revenue and other investors.

Conclusion
Because the Internet offers near-instantaneous access to millions of people worldwide, Scour.com's conduct is causing severe and irreparable harm to the plaintiffs in this case, and to the motion picture, recording and music publishing industries generally. Free riders such as Scour.com deprive copyright owners of the lawful fruits of their creativity, labor and investment. Plaintiffs are entitled to recover damages and Scour.com's unlawful profits, and Scour.com must be enjoined from further copyright infringement.