ACE, the largest group in the world, working to stop piracy, has had another big win. With the help of one of its newest members, sports broadcaster beIN, the group shut down several large sites that let people watch sports online. Where the sites were based, dozens of police officers in Egypt helped the people who owned the rights.
There’s no denying that the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has done well over the past few years.
The anti-piracy group includes significant rightsholders like Apple, the BBC, Canal+, Disney, Sky, Netflix, and Warner Bros. This group goes after the biggest pirates systematically.
ACE works well with law enforcement agencies worldwide and continues to add new users. Two new Asian rightsholders joined the group last week, and sports broadcaster beIN joined the group last month.
Crackdown on Egyptian Sports Streaming Sites
Already, the partnership with beIN is paying off. A few days ago, four major sports streaming sites, including Yalla-Shoot-7sry.com, yalla-shoot.us, and Yallashoot-news.com, were taken offline for breaking beIN’s rights.
In May, the sites in question had a total of 4.8 million “users,” most of whom were in Egypt. 60 Egyptian police officers and the country’s Ministry of Internal Affairs helped ACE and beIN.
The police action led to the arrest of three people and the taking of several domain names. ACE controlling these sites currently. Visitors to these sites will now see an ACE banner instead of live sports, telling them that their favorite streaming portal is no longer available because it violated copyright laws.
TorrentFreak did some research and found that ACE has also taken over several other sports streaming sites. Some of these are Goal-cairo.net and Yalla-shoot. club, and Yalla-live.us.
ACE and beIN Celebrate
Both ACE and beIN are happy with how things turned out. Jan van Voorn, who is in charge of global content protection at ACE, says that the wide cooperation is a big reason why the sites were taken down.
“Working together, we have the network, the resources and the expertise needed to tackle the serious threat piracy poses to media companies all over the world and to protect the legal marketplace for content creators,” Van Voorn notes.
A beIN spokesperson agrees with this and says that what happened last week was a huge success that will help protect copyright owners worldwide.
“Actions like those undertaken by Egyptian law enforcement agencies are a huge victory. In concert with ACE, we collectively have the means to support takedowns of this nature throughout the region, and will continue to do so to protect the leagues, fellow broadcasters and the entire sporting ecosystem.”
Largest Sports Streaming Sites are Still Online
There’s no doubt that the efforts to shut down the site had a significant effect. But that doesn’t mean Egypt’s streaming sports problem has been solved. The biggest “Yalla-Shoot” sites are still online.
At the time of writing, you can still go to Yalla-shoot.io, Yalla-shoot.com, and Yalla-shoot-new.com. Together, these sites have 20 million “users,” four times as many as the number of people who used the domains taken.
There is no doubt that ACE and beIN are aware of these domains. The question is whether they can find the people running the sites or get domain registries and registrars to do something.
