Movie studio discovers that its own computers host pirated copies of Jurassic World and requests Google to remove links to it

This article is more than 5 years old

This article is more than 5 years old

Universal Pictures in France has been seeding a pirated copy of its latest blockbuster Jurassic World from its own servers.



The Chris Pratt-featuring reinvention of Steve Spielberg’s 1993 action spectacular that revolutionised visual effects, has been riding high in the box office top 10, but has also seen high levels of piracy.

Universal filed a takedown notice with Google on 15 July under the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA), as spotted by the Register, demanding that the search engine block links to several sites allegedly hosting or linking to pirated copies of Jurassic World.

Among the block requests was a link to “http://127.0.0.1:4001/#/fr/”. The Internet Protocol address “127.0.0.1” is typically reserved to describe the “localhost” or machine on which a program or user is operating. This indicates the pirated copy of the movie was being hosted within Universal’s own computer network.

Movie studios and publishers typically use automated programs that search for unlicensed copyrighted works, in this case a movie. The program likely found a file being linked to from outside Universal’s network on its own computers, meaning that Universal was seeding pirated copies of its own movie.

Universal is no stranger to odd takedown requests. The movie studio also sent takedown notices to Google to request that the Internet Movie Database page listing its film Fast & Furious 7 be removed from Google’s index despite it hosting no infringing content.

• Large-scale online pirates to face up to 10 years’ jail under ministers’ proposals