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The United States Attorney for the District of Maryland has confirmed that 55 domain names were seized for allegedly broadcasting FIFA World Cup matches. The crackdown affects millions of visitors and a wide variety of sites. Despite the severity of the enforcement actions, some sites simply continue to do business from new domains.
Last Friday we reported that a new round of domain name seizures related to piracy it was probably being carried out by US law enforcement.
Dozens of popular sports streaming sites became inaccessible, replaced by a seizure banner stamped with prominent police teams.
Action T was officially confirmed a few hours ago by the United States Attorney's Office for the District of Maryland. The Bureau explains that 55 separate websites were hacked for allegedly broadcasting live games of the ongoing FIFA World Cup.
Illegal broadcasts of the FIFA World Cup
The authorities do not mention specific domain names, but we can confirm that several popular streaming sites with millions of visitors are affected, including hesgoal.com, 9goaltv.to, freestreams-live1.com, weakstreams.com, istream2watch.com, and yalla. . -shoots.com.
These domain names have been taken over by the US government and visitors see a warning banner when they try to access them.
โThis domain name has been seized by Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) pursuant to an order issued by the United States District Court for the District of Maryland, the banner reads, warning that violators risk from being criminally prosecuted.
A FIFA representative referred the infringing domain names to authorities in September. Homeland security agents in Maryland subsequently took up the case and confirmed that the sites were linked to infringing World Cup broadcasts.
An affidavit, filed in support of the domain name seizures, explains that the sites exploit copyrighted content to drive traffic. According to the United States Attorney's Office, the traffic is monetized through advertisements.
"Based on the widespread use of advertising on each site, the affidavit alleges that the purpose of distributing the infringing content is private financial gain for the operators of these websites," notes the Maryland US Attorney's Office.
"By seizing the domain names in question, the government prevents third parties from acquiring the name and using it to commit additional crimes, or from continuing to access the websites in their current forms."
returns
Domain seizures certainly have a big impact and some site operators may be deterred by enforcement action. In the past few days, however, we've seen several of the targeted sports streaming services simply switch to new domains.
Weakstreams, for example, has moved to a new domain name at weakstream.net and remains accessible. The same goes for Streamtowatch, Freestreams-live1 and Hesgoal.
Interestingly, the new domain name Hesgoal.me put a message that it will no longer broadcast UEFA matches because it respects the rights of copyright holders. It is not clear if that also applies to FIFA.
Meanwhile, Freestreams-live1 mentions that the site "had some problems" without referring to the domain seizure at all.
The seizures will continue
Whether these new domains will be around for long remains a question. Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) says it will continue to target pirate sites in the future.
โHSI will continue to focus on removing websites that facilitate digital piracy and other Internet intellectual property violations,โ said Special Agent in Charge James C. Harris III of HSI Baltimore.
"While many may believe that such websites do not pose serious threats, infringement of the rights of any intellectual property holders is a growing threat to our economic viability."
The HSI agent adds that these pirate sites may be conduits for other criminal activity, but there has been no mention of any arrests or upcoming indictments.
Direct red
This is not the first US campaign against sports streaming sites. Since 2010, the US authorities have seized several of these portals under the banner of โOperation on our sitesโ.
These first seizures were also addressed to Rojadirecta, which finally managed to recover your domain name after a legal protest.
Interestingly, the most recent round of domain seizures also includes several Rojadirecta-branded domain names, such as rojadirectatvlive.com. It is not clear if these are linked to the original Rojadirecta. In any case, getting them back now may not be easy.
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A list of all affected domain names that we know of is posted below. This may be updated in the future.
โ tvrojadirectaonline.net
โ toplivematch.net
โ live-sports-stream.net
โ 88zhibo.net
โ 247football.net
โ crichd.pro
โ rojadirecta-soccer.live
โ mitothao.live
โ ghiban1.live
โbongtron1.live
โ polysportstv.info
โ eplsite.football
โ yalla-shoots.com
โ www.debilstreams.com
โ tructiep99.com
โ toplivematch.com
โ redcardonlinetv.com
โ soccer24hd.com
โ score808.com
โ rojadirectatvlive.com
โ rojadirectaliga.com
โ mythethao.com
โ koragol.com
โjuventus-live-stream.com
โ istream2watch.com
โ ijube.com
โ hesgoal.com
โ guduballs.com
โ ghiban2.com
โ freestreams-live1.com
โ cado89.com
โ beeduball.com
โ amzfootball.com
โ acrackstreams.com
โ 222live.com
โ 9goal.tv
โ 9goaltv.to
โ rojadirecta.vip
