ACE and MPAA Seize Another Four IPTV domains as the Battle Against Piracy Rages OnACE and MPAA are continuing their fight against IPTV pirate services and have now taken another four domains off. Two of these domains were quite popular platforms that offered access to a variety of TV series and films. The coalition appears to be fighting a “Lernaean Hydra” as it counts the number of illicit platforms in the thousands. The coalition MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and ACE (Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment) is continuing the fight against pirate IPTVillicit streaming platformsTorrentFreak the websites that have seen the end of the road are “VstreamTV.com” “MaxTVLive.com” “MyIQXTV.com” and “JailbrokenBlackBox.com” The ACE has seized all four of these domains and if you attempt to visit them you will see a notice before being redirected to the website of the alliance. VStreamTV.com is the oldest of the bunch enjoying the peak of its popularity in 2015 to give some background on these entities. The TV box they sold had a whopping price of $349 but it wasn’t just the hardware people were paying for. Access to 1000 channels, 100000 movies and numerous TV shows was “lifetime.” Obviously the money paid for the device is now gone with the service taken down by the authorities and the content access is gone so don’t expect any refunds. MaxTVLive.com is a more recent entity that appears online in 2018 offering access to live TV content for $25 a month. As for the other two platforms, the ACE and MPAA radars were less popular but still caught up with them. The “JailbrokenBlackBox” didn’t even try to hide what they offered, since the domain name doesn’t leave much room for speculation. Figure 1 The notice you will see on the domains you have seized. Without counting the dark Web pirate IPTV offerings field experts estimate the number of pirate IPTV marketplaces to be more than 5,000. That said, the actions of ACE and MPAA look like a drop in the ocean of what’s happening but that’s not really the only truth. The crackdown brings results not only as a direct stop to piracy but also as a disincentive measure. Pirate platform owners don’t want to get caught because they’re hit by damage compensation orders that equal their earnings over the years. When they see other large or smaller IPTV platforms running down they are pushed to voluntarily shut down. However, as long as pirate IPTV services are needed, there will be people taking the risk of offering them. Consumers want affordable access to a wide range of content, and it is out of the budget of most people to pay for multiple legitimate subscription services. That said, in addition to fighting against pirate IPTV, entities such as ACE and MPAA should also consider what else they can do to make piracy outdated.