Throughout December 2024, American authorities closed a total of 138 illegal streaming sites. These IPTV platforms accumulated more than 800,000 annual visits. Most visitors were from the United States and Canada.
This major operation stems from a report by The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition of entertainment companies that has been fighting online piracy since 2017. Among the big names in this organization are: giants such as Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros., Universal, Sony and Apple. The organization describes itself as “the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition”.
Also read: viruses, data theft, espionage… the dangers of illegal IPTV streaming
A large-scale raid
As the Alliance explains in its press release, this “live sports hacking network” was mainly hosted on servers in Vietnam. It was one of the largest sports hacking networks in the world. Above all, it is the largest network closed by an action of the Alliance since its creation eight years ago.
“The shutdown of this world-famous live sports piracy network is a huge victory in our campaign against live sports piracy.”welcomes Larissa Knapp of the Motion Picture Association (MPA), an American trade organization which represents the main film and television studios.
For the manager, the operation must serve “warning to piracy operators” all over the world. Rights holders' defense associations do not intend to stop there. Other pirate sites are already in their sights.
Also read: pirate sites cost the audiovisual sector 1.5 billion euros in 2023, according to Arcom
beIN Sports, Canal+ and DAZN
On defunct pirate sites, Internet users could watch “dailyViewing sporting events, including content from all U.S. sports leagues and global leagues ». According to The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, all of its members have been affected to varying degrees by the existence of this pirate network.
This is especially the case for companies specializing in sports, such as beIN Sports, Canal+ and DAZN. The latter indicates that it is “very pleasing that a criminal operation of this magnitude has been suppressed”, because “hacking often compromises the security of fan data, which is then used for illegal purposes”.
Among the sites forcibly closed by the American justice system, we find MethStream, CrackStreams, WeakSpell, and MarkkyStreams. This operation is part of the war waged by rights holders and law enforcement against illegal streaming. This conflict is also raging in Europe. At the end of November, European police got their hands on an illegal IPTV and pirate streaming network which had 22 million users worldwide.
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Source :
ACE
