Tuesday, September 8, 2020

Hollywood Studios To Collect $9.9M From VidAngel

A group of Hollywood studios will collect $9.9M from bankrupt "movie sanitizing" service VidAngel, and VidAngel will drop a appeal of a $62.4M copyright infringement suit award, as part of an agreement between VidAngel and the studios. Disney, Warner Bros., 20th Century Fox and others had sued VidAngel in 2016, in order to stop the company from editing movies and streaming them to its customers. VidAngel--based in Utah--filed for bankruptcy in October of 2017, in order to avoid paying the $62.4M judgement against the company. VidAngel's service removed "objectional" material from popular Hollywood films, and offered $1-per-movie streaming, all without any licensing agreements from those movie studios. Earlier this year, the company had claimed they would be able to pay that $62.4M judgement, and that the company was "stronger than we've ever been".