If the illegal streaming site you’ve been using to watch the World Cup suddenly doesn’t exist anymore, or has been replaced by a giant JPEG announcing that “this site has been seized,” it’s because the U.S. Department of Justice and an international coalition of law enforcement agencies have shut down nearly 400 websites accused of illegally streaming FIFA World Cup matches. At the same time, a separate effort by the advertising industry has stripped nearly 1,400 more of the ad revenue that kept them alive.
The crackdown, dubbed Operation Offsides, is being led by the DOJ’s National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center with help from Homeland Security Investigations, a squad of international prosecutors, and private companies including FIFA, NBCUniversal, Warner Bros., UFC, and beIN Media Group. Authorities targeted piracy operations in countries including Peru, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Poland, and Colombia. Many of the seized domains now feature the aforementioned JPEG, essentially an illegal streaming site’s version of a tombstone.
Nearly 1,800 Piracy Sites Targeted in World Cup Streaming Crackdown
On the one hand, people are losing out on a free, albeit illegal, way to watch a sporting event they might otherwise be unable to access without paying an exorbitant fee. On the other hand, you don’t have to watch a soccer game with a live chat box next to it that’s filled with some of the most flagrantly racist s—t you’ve ever read in your life.
All the big illegal streaming operations are often thriving international businesses that generate millions through advertising, data collection, and subscriptions, and all while piggybacking on broadcasts that they never paid to distribute.
Governments and corporations have paired up to attack these sites with a one-two punch that involves taking some sites down and merely choking out the advertising revenue of some others. The latter is spearheaded by Trustworthy Accountability Group, or TAG, a name that could not sound less trustworthy. It’s a nonprofit backed by the digital advertising industry that says it has identified and demonetized 1,373 domains of piracy sites.
The problem with trying to kill one streaming site is that another exactly like it will almost immediately pop up. By distributing exclusion lists across major ad networks, the strategy is starving the entire advertising ecosystem that sustains the pirating industry.
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