Pirate Sites Play Possum While Boosting Counter-Enforcement Measures

Pirates refusing to quit and pirate sites coming back to life isn't unheard of but, for those caught in the act, the consequences can be severe. That's mostly the case in the United States and Europe but the global piracy landscape today is significantly bigger. According to broadcaster beIN, previously shuttered streaming sites are quickly getting back in the game.

 A man who previously admitted selling pirate TV devices recently appeared at Liverpool Crown Court for sentencing.

Hoping for leniency on three counts of fraud, Jonathan Edge’s defense evoked an image of a Robin Hood character stealing from the Premier League for the benefit of Sky TV-deprived local communities.

That went as well as could be expected, especially in light of the defendant’s previous convictions for fraud. That the piracy offenses took place while the Edge was on license following a three-year sentence for dealing cocaine, didn’t help much either. In that context, none of which was mentioned in the press release, the 40-month sentence handed down by the court doesn’t sound especially excessive.

Edge’s biggest mistake, however, was thumbing his nose at the Premier League. After takedown notices removed adverts for his service from Facebook and Instagram, he simply put them back up. Two years later, after signing a cease-and-desist order, Edge posted on social media that he would carry on regardless; he then went on to ignore multiple additional warnings.

Monitoring for compliance on home soil is trivial for the Premier League, but when similar understandings may have been breached in less predictable jurisdictions thousands of miles away, that brings a new set of challenges.

Notorious Markets: beIN / Miramax Submission

Previously the target of state-sponsored piracy as part of a wider diplomatic conflict, Qatar-based broadcaster beIN now faces similar piracy threats as its competitors. The same holds true for Miramax, the film and TV company 51% owned by beIN.

Every year the companies team up in a joint submission to the USTR’s review of notorious markets, outlining what they believe are the most serious piracy threats. What caught our eye in the submission’s browser-based streaming section is the number of sites that have faced enforcement action but through various means are effectively still in business.

WeCima

MyCima was once one of the largest pirate sites in the Middle East. The operation, which was purportedly operated from Alexandria, boasted over 50 million monthly visits and offered 12,000 movies and 26,000 TV shows. Reportedly taken down in February 2023, less than a month later there were already clear signs of a revival or resurrection, maybe even some kind of rebirth, under the brand ‘WeCima’.

Credit: beIN/Miramax submission

“Although MyCima was reportedly taken down by actions initiated by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) in February 2023, WeCima, a mirror version of MyCima with same content offered, was set up shortly after. It is already recording more than 18 million monthly visits,” the submission notes.

Platforms like MyCima and WeCima use various strategies to stay online, including the use of up to hundreds of domains. The ‘cima’ domains shown below are now under the control of the MPA, which effectively puts them out of action. Under what terms control changed is unknown but it most commonly happens via some sort of agreement.

The USTR submission states that WeCima also uses multiple domains to stay online.

“Apparently as a strategy to evade further enforcement actions, several WeCima domains and subdomains (wecima.click, wecima.co, mycima.wecima.watch, wecima.icu and many more) are continuously registered pointing at WeCima.cam,” it reads.

Shahid4u and Laroza

Further action in Egypt last September led to the reported shutdown of Laroza and the arrests of two alleged operators. Laroza was reportedly the largest pirate site in the Middle East and North Africa.

“Laroza is one of the oldest and most popular pirate websites in the Middle East and has a vast library of Arabic and international movies and series. Despite Laroza [being] reportedly taken down by actions taken by rightsowners in September 2024, new copycat domains have appeared online with the most significant being www.larozaa.net,” the report notes.

“Laroza’s operators have implemented an effective URL redirection strategy with redirections to multiple subdomains and TLD extensions applied daily or every other day. Some of their numerous domains used by the Laroza website are larona.one, laroza.vip, laroza.net, laroza.cam, laroza.tv, laroza.sbs among others. This strategy appears designed to circumvent enforcement and other disruption action taken by rights owners.”

A similar situation surrounds Shahid4u, which was taken down by ACE and Egyptian authorities in February 2023.

“Despite its closure, many copycat websites quickly surfaced. As of this writing, one of the prominent replacements is the domain www.shahid4u.my, which continues to operate alongside other similar domains such as shahid4u.watch, shahid4u.to, shahiid4u.cam, and shahid4u.diy.”

Whether the sites causing issues for beIN and Miramax are run by the same operators, their affiliates, or unconnected third parties, is difficult to prove. That being said, the speed at which they reappear in various forms suggests at least some preparation and does little to dampen suspicion.

To most users of these sites, if they look and perform as they used to, nothing else really matters. Whether that will have an impact on any deterrent effect intended by similar enforcement actions remains to be seen.

And Finally

Popular live sports streaming platform Freestreams-live was targeted by none other than Homeland Security Investigations during the FIFA World Cup in 2022. Pursuant to a warrant issued by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, US law enforcement seized freestreams-live1.com, at the time the site’s main domain.

After what appeared to be an effortless recovery, the site went on to deploy freestreams-live.ga and variants using the extensions .me, .im, .se, .top, .tv, and .nu. The submission notes that despite only being registered in April 2024, freestreams-live.my generated 11.8 million visits in August. Perhaps the seizure of a single domain should be viewed as symbolic of general intent rather than in any way effective.

The beIN and Miramax submission to the USTR is available here

Source

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