Pirate IPTV Services Are Shutdown in Big Sting Operation
These are pirate services that re-show streams from Dish Network or DirectTV. If you subscribe to one, be aware!
Hollywood Declares War on IPTV as Multiple Services Are Shut Down
Cord Cutters News – By: Luke Bouma – “This week we saw a major network of IPTV services with over 50 million customers get shut down by a police action in Europe. Now Hollywood and the MPAA are getting into the action as they use copyright claims to take down multiple IPTV services.
According to a report from TorrentFreak, multiple IPTV service domains including BestTVStreams, OneStepTV, TVStreamsNow, and DoozerIPTV have all been seized by the MPAA, now called MPA America, for copyright infringement.
Other services like XCaliberTV have started to inform their customers that their service was also shut down due to a copyright infringement claim.
These are just a few of the IPTV services that have been quietly taken offline in the last few weeks. For years, IPTV and streaming services have promised a huge collection of TV channels for crazy low rates. Now Hollywood has taken notice and after a few early legal wins against companies like Set TV NOW and the Dragon Box have decided to go full speed ahead in their efforts to shut down what they see as pirate services.
What is strange here is ACE and the MPA America are usually very vocal when they shut down an IPTV or pirate box service. Yet both have been silent about their recent successes. Typically, ACE and MPA America try to make examples out of services.
Over the last week more than 50 million IPTV customers have lost their service. Many have been left to wonder if they will get money back because they had prepaid for a year or more. Multiple Cord Cutters News readers have said when they asked about refunds their messages have been left unreturned. Service social media accounts have also been deleted.
This is likely just the start if the reports coming out of Europe are to be believed. According to police, during their raid on Xstream-codes.com they got the names of over 5,000 resellers. Many are predicting that information will be used to go after current resellers and if companies like Dish have their way they will go after IPTV subscribers.
We have also seen the US Department of Justice go after streaming services they say are pirate services. iStreamItAll was once one of the most popular private Roku Channels before it was removed. Now iStreamItAll’s website has been seized by the FBI following a Grand Jury indictment of the owner of the service.
Dish has won several lawsuits in Puerto Rico targeting resellers of IPTV services winning $412,500 and $305,000 in damages not from the people who owned the IPTV services but resellers.
What has been made clear recently is that a massive amount of resources are being spent to shut down pirate services with IPTV being a major focus of Hollywood. When you see numbers like 50 million subscribers you can see why.”