Amazon Sues DVD Dealer Peddling Pirated Prime Video Streaming Content

Jun 21, 2023

DVDs may be outdated by today’s standards, but Amazon is still trying to stop pirated DVDs from being sold online.

The company is suing an alleged video piracy ring that’s been operating through at least seven sites, including dvd-wholesale.com, which offer DVDs of hit films and TV shows for $10 to $100+.

According to the lawsuit, the operator of the sites, DVD Shelf, sell pirated discs, including of TVs shows from Prime Video, such as The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, which is exclusively available through the company’s streaming service.

“Amazon conducted multiple test purchases to confirm that the DVDs were pirated and bore infringing Amazon registered trademarks and artwork,” the company says. For the DVDs featuring non-Amazon content, the Motion Picture Association of America examined the purchases and confirmed all were bootleg.

DVD Shelf claims it's a leading DVD distributor warehouse in the US and offers discs at their factory price. But the lawsuit, filed in a US District Court in California, alleges a man named Yangchun Zhang has been running the video piracy ring from Sichuan, China.

Amazon also noted the sites' customers have been complaining about the DVDs' poor quality and that the products appear to be pirated. So to stop the illegal activities, Amazon is now demanding the court allow it to take control of the websites facilitating the video piracy. The company also wants to impound all bootleg DVDs from the operation while forcing PayPal to give up all the revenue from the DVD sales to Amazon.

"The actions from this global ring of fraudsters not only negatively impacts rightsholders such as Amazon and affected entertainment companies, it also directly impacts the deceived customers, who thought they were receiving the real thing," says Amazon's Director for Counterfeit Crimes Unit, Kebharu Smith.

DVD Shelf did not immediately respond to a request for comment.