Seems the folks at Movie88 aren’t actually paying any royalties for the redistribution of the movies. This article from MP3Newswire.net has an excellent description of the circumstances. The short version is this — laws in Taiwan require that a movie be registered as copyrighted within one month of being opened in theaters. Hardly any of the movies are registered and thus are effectively in the Taiwanese public domain. So Movie88, hosted in Taiwan, is technically compliant with local copyright laws.

It’ll be interesting to see what the reach of the MPAA is with regard to this. This situation feels similar to what the pharma industry has been fussing about this for years — companies in African nations that manufacturedrugs without respecting the patents.