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A MAJOR illegal sports streaming network visited 812million times to watch football games on the cheap has been shut down.
The world’s leading anti-piracy group has put a stop to illicit websites based in Vietnam, which were being accessed internationally.
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The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) said it had cracked one of the largest global sports piracy rings.
Their research found the notorious websites were visited 812million times in the past year, one of the largest ACE operations so far.
The sites were mainly used by people in the US and Canada, where sports games were streamed daily.
They were all pulled down – including bestsolaris.com, streameast.to, markkystreams.com, crackstreams.dev, and weakspell.to.
ACE targeted them through a global investigation and they agreed to transfer 138 domains immediately.
Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President for the Motion Picture Association (MPA) said: “The shutdown of this globally notorious live sports piracy ring is a huge victory in our campaign against the piracy of live sports programs and follows other recent successful actions by ACE and law enforcement in Vietnam.
“ACE’s live sports members face a unique threat when it comes to digital piracy, as live sports broadcasts lose substantial commercial value once the game ends.
“The takedown serves as a warning to piracy operators everywhere – including operators in live sports piracy – that ACE will identify and shut down their illegal operations.”
The illegal operation affected all ACE members, including ACE’s sports tier members beIN Sports, Canal+ and DAZN.
Ed McCarthy, Chief Operating Officer of DAZN said: “DAZN stands with ACE in the fight to eradicate piracy, which undermines the sports ecosystem at all levels.
“It is very pleasing that a criminal operation of this scale was taken down.
“Piracy often compromises the security of fans’ data, which is then used for illegal purposes, so the closure of this piracy ring has the added benefit that potential subscribers will be guided toward legitimate content providers like DAZN.”
Users trying to access the shut down sited will be redirected to the ACE “Watch Legally” page.
