"World's largest illegal live sports streaming provider" allegedly shut down
The entertainment association ACE says it has succeeded in shutting down a major illegal streaming site. The person responsible disagrees.
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Egyptian authorities, in cooperation with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), have allegedly shut down the "largest illegal live sports streaming provider in the world". This was announced by the anti-piracy association. It refers to a network called Streameast, which is responsible for 80 domains and counted more than 1.6 billion visits last year. The ACE speaks of a "resounding victory in its fight against digital piracy criminals", which "further benefits leagues, entertainment companies and fans worldwide". According to Torrentfreak, however, the person responsible for the portal has already contradicted this, saying that it is only about a group of free riders. Streameast continues to function.
Instead of free sports, now reference to legal offers
TorrentFreak quotes the operator as saying that he is not Egyptian at all. He is not affected and the streams will work as usual. The news site has a list of the domains taken over by ACE – meanwhile, the addresses of functioning mirror sites are already circulating in corresponding forums.
ACE, on the other hand, is talking about a break-up. According to the lobby organization, Streameast offered unauthorized access to broadcasts of matches from the most important European soccer leagues, including the English Premier League, the Spanish La Liga, the Italian Serie A and the German Bundesliga. Matches from European club competitions were also illegally streamed, as well as international tournaments and the US Major League Soccer (MLS). In addition, Streameast also broadcasts other competitions via sports-specific sites, including games from the US basketball league NBA, the ice hockey league NHL as well as combat and motor sports.
As the ACE claims to have determined, the streaming sites that were shut down were mainly visited from the USA, Canada, the UK, the Philippines and Germany. On the seized domains, there is now a redirect to an ACE advertisement for legal streaming offers – according to Torrentfreak, a common practice.
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Media organizations from all over the world have joined forces in the ACE to take action against the illegal distribution of copyrighted content. The member companies include Amazon, Apple, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Studios, Warner Bros. Discovery, Constantin Film and RTL. Almost exactly one year ago, the ACE, together with Vietnamese authorities, was able to shut down what was then the "largest organization of illegal streaming in the world".
(mho)
