{"id":63577,"date":"2022-04-11T09:02:22","date_gmt":"2022-04-11T09:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=63577"},"modified":"2022-04-11T09:02:22","modified_gmt":"2022-04-11T09:02:22","slug":"ace-finally-seizes-pirate-streaming-domains-after-years-of-legal-action","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/?p=63577","title":{"rendered":"ACE Finally Seizes Pirate Streaming Domains After Years of Legal Action"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ace-new-small\"<\/a>Over the past decade, hundreds of pirate streaming sites gained traction as free alternatives to official streaming platforms such as Netflix.<\/p>\n

In 2013, Afdah.com entered the already crowded market and quickly attracted millions of users tempted by a comprehensive library of copyright-infringing movies. But of course, along with a rise in Afdah\u2019s popularity came increased interest from copyright holders determined to shut down or disrupt the site.<\/p>\n

Afdah Was Originally Fueled By Content Stored on Google<\/h2>\n

In 2014, a German anti-piracy outfit identified more than 18,000 pirated videos<\/a> stored on Google\u2019s servers, noting that more than a dozen pirate sites were using the library as fuel for their own sites. <\/p>\n

Google described this as a violation of its terms of use, adding that infringing content is removed when rightsholders complain. Nevertheless, several well-known \u2018pirate\u2019 brands exploited the \u2018loophole\u2019, including Movie4K, Putlocker, Yify and Afdah.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"afdah-large\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

Whether Afdah continued to use Google\u2019s servers following the complaint is unclear but the site continued to grow. In 2015 it found itself among the top 250 most popular pirate sites<\/a> in the world meaning that it would remain on Hollywood\u2019s hit list. <\/p>\n

Movie Companies Increase The Pressure<\/h2>\n

With Afdah increasing in popularity, in 2015 the Motion Picture Association obtained a High Court injunction compelling the UK\u2019s leading ISPs to block Afdah.com<\/a>. <\/p>\n

Whether blocking was the direct reason is unclear but Afdah later deployed new domains including Afdah.tv and Afdah.to. These were blocked by ISPs following a legal process in Singapore<\/a> in 2018. This dynamic injunction was also used to block additional domains deployed by Afdah in more recent years.<\/p>\n

A year later, leading movie studios including Disney Enterprises, Universal City Studios, Netflix Studios and Village Roadshow applied for an ISP blocking injunction<\/a> in Australia covering dozens of pirate sites including Afdah.com. But the studios weren\u2019t done.<\/p>\n

In April 2021 we discovered<\/a> that MPA and ACE had obtained a DMCA subpoena in the United States compelling Cloudflare to hand over the personal details of an individual behind an Afdah domain. At the time the domain was receiving more than six million hits per month. Just weeks later, Google received a request to remove Afdah from its search results but did not reveal the details \u201cdue to the nature of the court\u2019s order\u201d.<\/p>\n

In October 2021, the MPA labeled Afdah.video (another new domain) a \u2018notorious market\u2019 in a submission<\/a> to the United States Trade Representative, claiming that its operator lives in Singapore. Around six months ago reports suggested that the original Afdah may have gone down but given the number of other unrelated sites using its name to get traffic, some believed it may have been resurrected.<\/p>\n

We can now confirm that the site\u2019s official domains definitely won\u2019t be making a comeback.<\/p>\n

MPA\/ACE Get Results After Years of Legal Action<\/h2>\n

On April 8, 2022, Afdah\u2019s confirmed official domains \u2013 Afdah.com and Afdah.video \u2013 found themselves under new ownership. As the latter\u2019s WHOIS information shows, it\u2019s now under the control of the Motion Picture Association.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"afdah-mpa-whois\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

The \u2018seizure\u2019 of these domains hasn\u2019t been officially confirmed by the MPA or ACE but it\u2019s likely they were handed over as part of a legal agreement between Afdah\u2019s owner and the movie companies. In many similar cases the studios\u2019 investigators have been able to find out the real identities of site owners and contact them directly with an order to cease and desist. <\/p>\n

One of the conditions for site operators not being sued by the studios is that they hand over domains to the MPA. These are then used to display a deterrent message to would-be users of the shuttered platforms suggesting that they go legal to avoid putting themselves at risk. <\/p>\n

As the image below shows, Afdah\u2019s oldest domain (Afdah.com) and its newest (Afdah.video) now display such a warning.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

\"ace-shutdown-2022\"<\/a><\/center><\/p>\n

It took the MPA more than seven years but as the case against PrimeWire<\/a> (an even older site) shows, the MPA\u2019s anti-piracy division is always prepared for the long haul.<\/p>\n

From: TF<\/a>, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.<\/p>\n

Powered by WPeMatico<\/a><\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Over the past decade, hundreds of pirate streaming sites gained traction as free alternatives to official streaming platforms such as Netflix. In 2013, Afdah.com entered the already crowded market and quickly attracted millions of users tempted by a comprehensive library of copyright-infringing movies. But of course, along with a rise in Afdah\u2019s popularity came increased […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":63578,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[308],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-63577","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-torrent"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63577","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=63577"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/63577\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/63578"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=63577"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=63577"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.cryptocabaret.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=63577"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}