With the backing of the Motion Picture Association, the studios had taken the action over the web site Film88.com, which charged between $1 and $1.50 to view a variety of popular movies.
The MPA's director of worldwide anti-piracy operations, John Malcolm, said MasterSurf set up an international web of servers designed to shelter the venture for liability.
The trade group said Tan previously operated an almost identical website, Movie88.com, out of Taiwan until authorities there shut the company down. MasterSurf's primary servers were then hosted out of the Netherlands and Iran, but the MPA and a Netherlands anti-piracy organisation used Dutch courts to shut down servers there, according to the MPA.
Tan and MasterSurf also were barred from infringing on any of the studios' movies, and ordered to destroy any and all copies of copyright films that reside on servers or in other formats.