In recent years, software applications that provide access to the latest movies, TV shows, live TV and premium sports events have become increasingly popular.

Most commonly available for Android, PC, and iOS platforms, these tools often come pre-configured for piracy meaning that when they installed, the latest content is just a few clicks away. This approach means that such apps can be quickly ejected from Apple’s App Store and Google Play on the basis they are self-contained piracy tools. However, there is another way.

Evading App Store and Google Play Removal

Exposure on official app stores is a tried-and-tested method to grow public awareness of an app but if they are quickly removed for infringement, that all falls apart. To prevent this from happening, apps have been appearing on both platforms that are capable of supplying infringing content but have crucial components missing at the point of download. These need to be added in at a later point to provide functionality.

One example is the ‘ Watched ‘ streaming app which at the time of writing is in the Top 30 most popular entertainment apps on Apple’s App Store. No content is presented in the app but after installation, users are prompted to supply a ‘bundle’ via a URL of their choosing. No information is provided as to what this URL should be but a little searching online reveals that certain URLs make ‘Watched’ much more useful.

‘Watched’ Bundle Available at Oha.to

One of the more popular ‘bundle’ URLs is Oha.to and when this is entered into ‘Watched’ it transforms the app in much the same way as adding a third-party repository/addon to Kodi might. The website at this URL contains the necessary components to fill ‘Watched’ with movies, TV shows and live TV channels, which are all accessible via the provided interface.

(Before adding ‘Oha.to on the left, after on the right)

While the ‘Watched’ app remains accessible on app stores and via the software’s homepage, there are moves by global entertainment industry companies to target bundle URLs, including Oha.to .

ACE Goes to Court in the United States

The Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is a global anti-piracy coalition that brings together dozens of the most powerful entertainment industry companies in the world. These include the major Hollywood studios plus Netflix and Amazon, all of which aim to disrupt the illegal streaming market to protect their businesses.

Yesterday, ACE members filed an application for a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare in a California court and the complaint itself shows how convoluted these matters can become.

Cloudflare provides services to Oha.to but at least as far as we can tell (and like Cloudflare), Oha.to doesn’t carry any infringing content either. Instead, Oha.to provides a service that enables end-users of ‘Watched’ to find content to which ACE members hold the rights.

“We have determined that individuals operating and controlling Oha.to have infringed ACE Members’ Copyrighted Works by using Cloudflare servers, networks, and other services, to connect end users of the ‘Watched’ mobile application to websites containing infringing content,” explains MPA Executive Vice President & Chief of Global Content Protection, Jan van Hoorn.

“The Oha.to service receives requests for infringing content from the Watched application, scrapes various links to identify cyberlockers containing the requested infringing content, and returns a response containing the scraped links to the application, which allows users of the Watched application to stream infringing content.”

ACE Wants To Unmask The Operator(s) Of Oha.to

The purpose of the ACE legal action is to find out who is behind the Oha.to repository/bundle. In common with similar requests, it requires Cloudflare to hand over the personal identities of the people behind the website, including their names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information and account histories.

Whether Cloudflare will have any useful information to hand over is unclear but this is not the first time that ACE has gone after component services that allow ‘Watched’ to function.

As reported last November, ACE previously filed an application for a similar DMCA subpoena against the Tonic domain registry in an effort to discover the identities of the individuals behind Huhu.to.

This domain operates in a similar if not identical manner to Oha.to, in that people who use the ‘Watched’ app can enter the domain when prompted to supply a ‘bundle’ URL, prompting the ‘Watched’ app to do something useful. It’s unknown whether Tonic was able to provide any useful information in this case but the domain is fully functional at the time of writing.

The ACE application for DMCA subpoena can be found here ( 1 , 2 )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Every year the MPA and RIAA respond to a request from the Office of the US Trade Representative to submit their recommendations for the annual “notorious markets” list.

In many cases, the industry groups choose to nominate the world’s most popular pirate sites and services for a mention, including but not limited to The Pirate Bay, YTS, RarBG, 1337x, and Popcorn Time, for example.

More recently, however, the MPA and RIAA have begun mentioning ancillary companies that in their judgment are not necessarily pirate services in themselves but due to their provision of systems and infrastructure, are in a position to act affirmatively to reduce the effectiveness of pirate sites.

As reported this week, the MPA and RIAA has now chosen to nominate domain name companies and services including the Njalla privacy service associated with Pirate Bay co-founder Peter Sunde and the Tonic domain registry that is often favored by pirate services.

Pressure Has Been Building on Tonic Domain Registry

In September, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the global anti-piracy coalition made up of the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and dozens of other companies, obtained a DMCA subpoena compelling Tonic to hand over information held on major pirate sites including The Pirate Bay, YTS, 1337x, EZTV, Seasonvar, Tamilrockers, Lordfilms, and many others.

A month later, ACE was back in court again, this time obtaining a DMCA subpoena requiring Tonic to hand over information held on massive Germany-focused streaming site S.to.

The dust had barely settled when ACE returned to court once again, obtaining another subpoena forcing Tonic to give up the identities of the people behind torrent giant 1337x.to (again), streaming site BS.to, Kimcartoon.to, Vumoo.to, Ololo.to, Seriesflix.to, Kinox.to, Movie4k.to plus many more.

Back Once Again With Yet Another Demand For Information

It’s unclear exactly how many pirate sites utilize .to domains for their operations but ACE clearly sees the registry’s involvement as part of their infrastructure as a problem when it comes to its enforcement actions. As a result, a DMCA subpoena ACE obtained in recent days from a California court lists two dozen problematic platforms for which it seeks additional information.

The majority of the domains are focused on streaming movies and TV shows, with sites including Lordfilm, Ymovies, Pelis24, Series24, HDGo, HDSS, Flixtor, Soap2Day and Solarmovie all getting a prominent mention.

Also present in the demand for information is a selection of popular torrent indexes such as TorrentGalaxy, Monova, and Glodls. These make an appearance alongside sites operating in different niches such as popular Germany-focused piracy forum Boerse and proxy-centric platform Unblocked. DDL-Warez is also featured in the subpoena but at the time of writing appears to be down.

Sites Infringe Copyrights in Popular Movies and TV Shows

Along with each site is a claim that they infringed rights in a specific movie or TV show. These include the movies Frozen II, Dolittle, Wonder Woman, Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, Beautiful Boy, Bird Box, Triple Frontier, and Scoob! In the cases of Series 24 and Flixtor, both stand accused of illegally offering the first episode in the TV series Watchmen.

The application was filed by Jan van Voorn, Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection for the Motion Picture Association.

“The ACE Members (via the Motion Picture Association, Inc.) are requesting issuance of the attached proposed subpoena that would order Tonic Domains Corporation to disclose the identities, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account histories of the users operating the websites [listed below],” it reads.

A letter to Tonic Domains attached to the subpoena repeats a similar message.

At the same time, ACE also obtained a second DMCA subpoena claiming that the linking site Huho.to infringed its members’ copyrights in the movies Beauty and the Beast and It Chapter Two. The claim is that Huhu.to connects users of the popular ‘ Watched ‘ mobile application to cyberlockers containing infringing content so, as a result, its operator’s details should be handed over.

The anti-piracy coalition lists a number of sites where the movies were hosted including Clipboard.cc, GoUnlimited.to, Mixdrop.to, Upstream.to, Vivo.sx, Vidlox.me, and Clipwatching.com, but these sites don’t appear to be direct targets in the subpoena.

Documents supporting the DMCA subpoenas can be found here 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 (pdf)

List of Domains and Main Use (Both Subpoenas)

lordfilm.to – streaming
ddl-warez.to – down
boerse.to – piracy forum
pepecine.to – streaming
ymovies.to – streaming
pelis24.to – streaming
kinoz.to – streaming (kinox.to alternate)
monova.to – torrents
unblocked.to – proxy site
glodls.to – torrents
byte.to – DDL/streaming
enstream.to – streaming
series24.to – streaming
hdgo.to – streaming
ilgeniodellostreaming.to – streaming
movie-blog.to – DDL index
torrentgalaxy.to – torrents
goojara.to – streaming
supernova.to – streaming
levidia.to – streaming
flixtor.to – streaming
hdss.to – streaming
solarmovie.to – streaming
soap2day.to – streaming
huhu.to (subpoena 2)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Back in August, members of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), an anti-piracy coalition featuring the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Amazon, and more than two dozen other companies, filed a lawsuit against US company TTKN Enterprises, LLC.

Better known online as IPTV service Crystal Clear Media (CCM), TTKN and owners Todd and Tori Smith of Florida were accused by Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Warner, Universal, Netflix, Columbia and StudioCanal of operating a pirate service providing access to thousands of live and title-curated television channels in breach of their copyrights.

“Blatantly Infringing Service”

Citing blockbusters including Disney’s Frozen II, Warner Bros’ Harry Potter collection, Columbia Picture’s Bad Boys for Life, and Universal’s Mr. Robot, the companies alleged that TTKN/CCM’s operators had gone to great lengths to hide their roles in an operation that had illegally streamed these titles and more to the public. Domains including mediahosting.one, crystalcleariptv.com, ccmedia.one, ccbilling.org, cciptv.us, ccreborn.one, ccultimate.one, superstreamz.com, and webplayer.us, were mentioned as supporting the operation.

Describing CCM as a “blatantly infringing service”, the entertainment companies noted that despite being acutely aware that rival service Vaders had previously come to an untimely end for similar actions at the hands of the same plaintiffs, CCM continued to provide an illegal VOD service to the public. Furthermore, the service also continued to expand its reach via a network of resellers.

“Defendants’ reseller program plays a pivotal role in their infringing enterprise. Defendants’ resellers market and promote CCM as a substitute for authorized and licensed distributors,” the lawsuit claimed.

Alleging willful direct copyright infringement, the plaintiffs demanded the maximum statutory damages of $150,000 per infringed work plus the same amount per work as a result of CCM inducing others by “encouraging, and promoting” the use of CCM for copyright infringement purposes.

Parties Reach Settlement Agreement

While these kinds of cases have the potential to roll on for some time, it transpires the plaintiffs and TTKN/CCM plus named defendants Todd and Tori Smith have agreed to settle their dispute. The agreement was reached on November 2, 2020, and as a result, they are together asking the court to sign off on a judgment in favor of the plaintiffs, awarding a permanent injunction and damages.

In respect of the injunction, the defendants comprehensively agree not to distribute any copyrighted content owned by the plaintiffs or their subsidiaries in any manner, including via streaming. All operations of Crystal Clear Media must be completely shut down within five days of any injunction and its operators are barred from distributing or otherwise releasing any of its source code, domain names, trademarks and other assets.

“Defendants irrevocably and fully waive notice of entry of the Permanent Injunction, and understand and agree that violation of the Permanent Injunction will expose Defendant to all penalties provided by law, including contempt of Court,” it reads.

“Defendants consent to the continuing jurisdiction of the Court for purposes of enforcement of the Permanent Injunction, and irrevocably and fully waive and relinquish any argument that venue or jurisdiction by this Court is improper or inconvenient.”

Proposed Judgment Includes a Massive Damages Award

The original complaint included references to the now-defunct Vaders IPTV service that was also targeted by the same plaintiffs in a largely secret lawsuit in Canada. However, while the Vaders/Vader Streams matter ended in a $10 million damages award in favor of the studios, TTKN/CCM has agreed to pay substantially more than its former rival.

“Damages are awarded in favor of Plaintiffs and against Defendant TTKN Enterprises, LLC d/b/a Crystal Clear Media, in the total amount of forty million dollars ($40 million),” the proposed judgment reads.

While the proposed consent judgment and permanent injunction are yet to be signed off by Judge George H. Wu in a California court, the nature of the agreement means that is likely to be a formality in the days to come.

The proposed orders can be found here ( 1 , 2 , 3 pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Back in 2018, streaming search engine Alluc announced that it would be closing down .

Considering the site’s length of service, an impressive 13 years, a sizeable gap was left in the market for some kind of replacement.

While there are plenty of indexing sites around, dedicated search engines have proven less easy to find in the current climate.

The Rise of the Ololo Streaming Video Search Engine

On April 1, 2018, a new streaming video search engine appeared. Named Ololo and located at Ololo.to, the site gave users the ability to search for the latest movies and TV shows.

By crawling some of the largest video hosting platforms on the planet, including the now-defunct Openload, Streamango, Rapidvideo and Verystream, for example, the site became a hit with users.

“With ololo you can search hundreds of websites at one place and you can also use ololo as an alluc alternative. Help us spread the word and tell your friends who are looking for alluc alternatives,” the site previously announced.

One Year Ago: Ololo Takes a Big Hit

Exactly a year ago, the unlicensed video streaming market received a huge blow when Openload, a massive file-hosting platform generating more traffic than legal services such as Hulu or HBO Go, was suddenly shut down along with stablemates Streamango, Streamcherry, and Verystream.

All had been shuttered after coming under pressure from global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, which required their operators to pay a “significant” damages award. The action had a serious knock-on effect for Ololo too, which previously crawled the platforms looking for content.

“Goodbye openload, streamango, verystream. This is gonna hurt us for a long time,” the site reported at the time.

Recovering and Moving On – For a While

During the months to follow, Ololo added support for even more sites including Viduplayer.com, mystream.to, upstream.to, videobin.co, prostream.to, onlystream.tv, and many more. As recently as May this year, Ololo began offering support for other platforms including streamtape.com and oogly.io.

As a result and from a standing start a little over two years earlier, the site was generating significant traffic, pulling in an estimated two million visitors per month**, many of whom commented on the quality of the platform and the results produced. However, trouble lay ahead.

At some point, the site’s Twitter account was suspended for violating the platform’s rules. The nature of the violation isn’t known but the account, which was supposed to be used to notify users of outages, would’ve come in handy.

Without warning from the site’s operator/s, Ololo suddenly went down in the past few days leaving the following message: “ololo says goodbye! The ololo search engine has been discontinued.”

While many of the site’s users felt the closure was a complete surprise, recent history reveals that the search engine had some problems. It isn’t clear whether these were the direct cause of the site shutting down but in the scheme of things, it’s likely they played a part.

Pressure from Hollywood – Blocking

Earlier this month we reported how group of major Hollywood studios, Netflix, and other movie companies had obtained a new pirate site-blocking injunction in Australia.

The injunction targeted 78 domains, requiring that the majority of ISPs in Australia block them moving forward. On the list was Ololo, with the applicants in the case stating that the search engine’s “primary purpose or effect” was to infringe or facilitate the infringement of copyright.

While a blocking order in Australia wouldn’t have affected the site’s traffic too much, another more significant event was on the horizon. After successfully shuttering Openload and colleagues a year ago, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) was on the heels of Ololo too.

Pressure from Dozens of Companies – DMCA Subpoena

This month, ACE obtained a DMCA subpoena compelling the Tonic domain registry, the operator of Ololo’s .to domain, to hand over information on many sites, including Ololo.

As a result, Tonic was ordered to disclose the identities, including names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates and account histories of the people operating the sites, Ololo.to included.

Again, it is not clear whether the blocking, subpoena, or the prospect of being unmasked caused the shutdown of Ololo but the timing of the site’s closure raises plenty of questions. However, with the platform now consigned to history, perhaps it will be allowed to just fade away.

Update: **A statement sent to TF by Ololo indicates that contrary to SimilarWeb stats, Ololo only received “6,000 to 8,000 visitors daily.” The site supplied additional information as follows;

“We never made a single cent from this website, although there was one popup to cover server costs it was not enough. With such small traffic we had to pay this site from our pockets,” the statement reads.

“With that being said, closing ololo was in our minds many times before. The recent Australian block and now ACE taking actions were the final signals for us to shut down this site for good.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In June 2017, an unprecedented number of global content creators and distribution platforms announced the formation of a brand new coalition to collaboratively fight Internet piracy on a global scale.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) initially brought together 30 companies to form a who’s who of the global entertainment market. With Amazon, Disney, NBCUniversal, Netflix, Paramount, Sony Pictures, and Warner Bros. leading the charge, the aim was to pool resources to combat the rise of illegal streaming services and other unlicensed content providers.

Since then the coalition has slowly expanded, adding various entertainment companies to what has become the world leader in content protection enforcement. A few hours ago, ACE welcomed the most important addition to the coalition since its founding more than three years ago.

AppleTV+ Joins ACE

Needing little introduction, AppleTV+ is the subscription streaming service operated by tech giant Apple Inc. Having launched in November 2019, AppleTV+ didn’t exist when ACE was formed but its addition to the global anti-piracy initiative cannot be understated.

Since 2016, Apple has been producing and distributing its own original content and by late 2019, its spend was believed to have reached more than $6 billion. While production is currently on hold due to the coronavirus pandemic, Apple will be keen to protect its works moving forward and given ACE’s experience and momentum, there’s arguably no better partner available today.

“The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s leading coalition dedicated to protecting the dynamic legal market for creative content, today announced that Apple TV+ is its newest member and will join its governing board,” ACE said, officially welcoming AppleTV+ to the fold.

“The addition of Apple’s streaming service further strengthens ACE’s collective approach to disrupting a piracy ecosystem that harms creators.”

Not Just a Regular Member of ACE

Over the past two years, ACE has added several new members including Discovery, the UK’s Channel 5, Viacom-owned Telefe and even ISP Comcast . However, none of these companies will enjoy the power apparently being granted to AppleTV+.

The key term in the ACE announcement is that Apple’s VOD platform will join the ACE governing body. This group was initially limited to the founders of ACE – Netflix, Inc., Amazon Studios LLC, Paramount Pictures Corporation, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Inc., Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation, Universal City Studios LLC, Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc., and Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures – so AppleTV+ is the first company to sit at the top of ACE having not been there at the start.

With this new standing, AppleTV+ will have considerable power within the coalition. Not long after ACE was founded, a confidential source shared an internal ACE document with TorrentFreak. It revealed how ACE was set to operate, including the power thresholds of various members and how much they would have to contribute to the operation.

At the time, governing body members were required to contribute $5m each annually, unless they were already a member of the MPAA (now MPA). This effectively meant that only Amazon and Netflix paid the full amount of $5m per year each but given that Netflix is now an MPA member, that position may well have changed. Nevertheless, being at the top of ACE brings certain privileges.

Governing Body Powers

With reference to the ACE founding document seen by TF, ACE governing members were set to meet at least four times every year, with each company nominating a senior executive as a representative at meetings chaired by the MPA’s General Counsel.

Importantly, the governing members (which now include AppleTV+) set the direction of ACE and are granted full voting rights on ACE business. This includes the approval of initiatives and public policy, anti-piracy strategy, budget-related matters, plus final approval of legal action.

On top, governing members have the power to vote for new members to join the coalition or expel those that are no longer needed.

AppleTV+ Could Be the Last Governing Member of ACE

Referring again to the ACE founding documents, the original plan was for the coalition to never have more than nine governing body members. With the appointment of AppleTV+, that limit has now been reached.

In a rapidly moving market, it’s certainly possible that will change in time, but given that even one persistent objection by a governing member is enough to stop any matter from being approved, adding even more new members to the governing body opens up the possibility of deadlock.

The Ascent of AppleTV+ Only Brings Benefits

As a content creator itself, Apple will be happy to utilize the anti-piracy resources available at ACE. Equally, having AppleTV+ on board will boost the strength of ACE itself and it will certainly welcome the considerable financial contributions from the company.

Whether those contributions will be used to boost overall resources or reduce the financial contributions made by other members will remain a closely-guarded secret. But whatever the outcome, it’s safe to say that ACE isn’t going anywhere – much to the disappointment of pirates everywhere.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In addition to serving cease-and-desist notices on various players involved in the supply of pirated movies and TV shows, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment often takes matters a step further.

Mostly via copyright infringement lawsuits filed in the United States, the global anti-piracy coalition has accused several providers of acting outside the law, hoping to shut the services down and achieve a damages award or significant settlement.

Copyright Infringement Lawsuit Against CCM

During August, ACE sued pirate provider Crystal Clear Media (CCM) under its business name TTKN Enterprises LLC. It also named Todd and Tori Smith of Florida as defendants, identifying them as the operators of CCM.

A key feature of the case is the emphasis placed on so-called VOD content. While CCM and other providers tend to provide thousands of live TV channels, they also delivered so-called 24/7 channels (which reportedly offered “marathons of Disney’s movie Frozen II and Warner Bros.’s Harry Potter movie collection”) along with other mainstream movies on-demand.

According to the complaint, CCM knew this was a problem after ACE successfully shut down the Vaders IPTV platform last year. However, instead of backing away, CCM continued to provide access to video-on-demand while cultivating a network of resellers dedicated to servicing existing and prospective CCM customers.

Lawsuit Demands Injunctive Relief and Damages

The ultimate goals of the lawsuit against CCM are to win a permanent injunction to take it offline while obtaining a substantial damages award. With statutory damages running to $150,000 per title infringed, significant amounts are on the table.

In the first instance, however, the ACE members – including Disney, Paramount, Amazon, Netflix and others – sought a preliminary injunction with a number of key elements. That was comprehensively achieved via an order handed down by Judge George H. Wu in a California district court this week.

Preliminary Injunction

Addressing the plaintiffs’ claims under 17 U.S.C. § 106 of the Copyright Act , Judge Wu ordered the defendants not to directly or secondarily infringe any of the rights owned or controlled by the plaintiffs in respect of their copyrighted works.

While that effectively prevents the CCM service from operating, the Judge also responded to requests from the plaintiffs to render unusable a wide range of domain names previously deployed by the IPTV provider.

“Except to as requested by Plaintiffs, Defendants shall not transfer or otherwise relinquish control to the domains: mediahosting.one, crystalcleariptv.com, ccmedia.one, ccbilling.org, cciptv.us, ccreborn.one, ccultimate.one, superstreamz.com and webplayer.us,” the order reads.

Along those same lines, the Judge further ordered GoDaddy, One.com and their respective registrars to disable access to the above domains while preventing them from being modified, sold, transferred or deleted. The WHOIS information of the domains must also be preserved, including all contact and similar identifying information.

Additionally, the listed domain companies, plus all others receiving notice of the order, must preserve all evidence that may be used to identify the people that used the domains in question to infringe copyright.

Injunction Also Targets Resellers of the CCM Service

The original complaint alleges that CCM operated an “extensive and expanding” reseller network. These people bulk-bought “credits” from CCM that were converted to subscriber login credentials when purchased by customers.

“Defendants’ reseller program plays a pivotal role in their infringing enterprise. Defendants’ resellers market and promote CCM as a substitute for authorized and licensed distributors,” the lawsuit claims.

After hearing that this expansion poses an exponential infringement threat, Judge Wu agreed that the network of sellers must also be prevented from operating. With that, he granted permission for the entertainment companies to complete service of process on anyone acting in concert with the defendants, including resellers of the service.

“Upon receipt of a copy of this Order, these individuals and entities shall cease directly or secondarily infringing any of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works through any means including publicly performing, reproducing, or otherwise infringing in any manner…any right under 17 U.S.C § 106 in any of Plaintiffs’ Copyrighted Works by continuing to provide access to Defendants’ service or by any other means,” the Judge added.

While CCM is already believed to be out of action, the above paragraph indicates that if resellers of CCM are currently offering other IPTV packages from a different supplier that also offer illegal access to the plaintiffs’ content, they must stop doing that too after receiving a copy of the order.

The preliminary injunction is available here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Running in their own niche alongside traditional streaming portals and torrent sites , pirate IPTV services have, over the past several years, become the “next big thing” in online piracy.

With relatively humble roots there are now seemingly hundreds of suppliers, some near the top of the tree with others simply rebranded versions of similar services. It’s reportedly a billion-dollar business in the United States alone but one service that recently stopped adding to that tally was Area 51.

Area 51 Announces its Shutdown

In late June, customers of Area 51 began receiving emails with the sender marked as ‘support@area51-hosting.host’, denoting one of the streaming platform’s official domains. It revealed that after several years of active service, Area 51 would be shutting down.

“We have been forced to make this very difficult decision, and close Area 51. We had quite a run, and we wouldn’t have been able to do it without customers like you,” the email began.

With little other information available through public channels, speculation that the service may have run into legal trouble wasn’t far away. However, when pirate IPTV platforms disappear, they usually do so fairly tidily, but that wasn’t the case here.

The email from Area 51 indicated that another “amazing company” called Outer Limits would be taking over all of Area 51’s customer accounts, suggesting that subscriptions wouldn’t simply be lost. Indeed, former Area 51 clients were told to log into the Outer Limits site (outerlimits.info) with their current client area login credentials.

Resurrections/Rebranding Don’t Sit Well With Copyright Holders

Soon after, customers received another email, again from Area 51. This gave more information, stating that some of the team had decided to “move on to other ventures” while some had “just decided to focus more on our families.” However, earlier references to using Outer Limits were gone, replaced with a new brand purportedly taking over – Singularity Media.

“Hello and welcome to Singularity Media. We have taken over your account from your existing IPTV provider,” an email from the provider to its new customers explained.

“Your account remains the same and we are now looking after it for you. This means your logins remain the same.”

The announcement was certainly curious. If Area 51 had been subjected to legal threats from any credible entertainment anti-piracy group, directing customers to a new pirate service would be forbidden under the terms of any agreement following a normal cease-and-desist order.

So, given the rumors that some or all of the Area 51 team may have been personally served with orders to shut down, it wasn’t really a surprise when reports surfaced days later that Singularity Media would be shutting down too. Its URL is still dead but we can now reveal that Area 51 was indeed subjected to legal threats.

Domains Seized By the Alliance For Creativity and Entertainment

Area 51 operated various aspects of its service from several domains, including area-51-hosting.host. In addition to being identified as the sender of the ‘shutdown’ email, this domain acted as a sales portal for Area 51, offering packages at $10 per month up to a yearly subscription of $120.

After almost two months of uncertainty, we now confirm that the ownership of this domain has now been transferred from the Area 51 team and into the hands of the MPA which represents the major Hollywood studios and Netflix.

As previously reported on numerous occasions, including the shutdown of the Vaders service , when the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment arranges for a domain to be seized, it is transferred to the custody of the MPA.

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We can also confirm that at least two other domains previously operated by Area 51 are also in the hands of the MPA, including area51tv.stream and theuforepo.us. The latter, a reference to ‘the UFO repo’, was deployed by Area 51 as a repository to host various APKs and plug-ins used to access the service.

A Simple Shutdown – Or Will the Area 51 Mystery Continue to Unfold?

In common with its Nevada-based namesake, the now-confirmed shutdown of Area 51 has the potential to fuel more conspiracy theories. The big question, of course, is whether this matter is now over as far as the massive global anti-piracy coalition ACE is concerned or if there’s more action to come.

One only has to look at the sudden shut down of the Vaders IPTV service last year and the official announcement, arriving months later, that revealed that Vaders’ operators had agreed to pay ACE members $10m in damages . Whether that will be repeated here remains a mystery.

At this stage, it’s hard to say precisely what aspect of the Area 51 service was focused on by ACE lawyers but given recent lawsuits, including one against Clear View Media first reported by TF last week , Area 51’s VOD offering seems a likely candidate.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.