A Host of IPTV Services Finds Trouble From the ACE and the MPA

• ACE is targeting a fairly insignificant pirate IPTV service provider because it’s hosting more services of the same kind.
• The particular player is also offering video-on-demand 24/7 channels, which makes it an easy target.
• VOD is on the rise, and this applies to both legal and illegal content distribution platforms.

The ACE and the MPA, the piracy-fighting duo representing American rightsholders, have stricken gold by finding an IPTV service provider that serves quite a few others. More specifically, the anti-piracy coalitions are targeting “SentraTV,” a seemingly insignificant IPTV service provider that has a handful of daily visitors on its website via a DMCA subpoena.

This small entity caught the copyright holders’ attention because its correspondence address serves many other IPTV sellers like PingIPTV, UpTickTV, and Wave-TV. ACE wants to find out if there are connections or overlaps between the various services, as the same group of people may be hiding behind all of them.

The websites of these services are using similar themes and layouts, while pricing is also the same. Also, they appear to be using the same content supplier or CDN infrastructure.

The DMCA subpoena is directed to Cloudflare, asking for the disclosure of names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, e-mail addresses, payment information, account updates, and the account histories of the users operating “sentratv.com” and “123tvnow.com.” Both of the named websites remain online and appear to be operational, so the legal action hasn’t had a strong intimidation effect on their operators yet.

For ACE, taking down SentraTV in court would be pretty easy, as platforms that offer VOD services don’t require much work from the prosecutor’s legal team to prove the copyright violations. It is important to clarify that we’re not at that stage yet. The rightsholders may be more interested in finding out the identities of the people behind the platforms than having damage compensation orders approved.

Video-on-Demand services are on the rise right now, as they are more comfortable for the users. All that is needed is to set up a subscription, and you’re set to enjoy what the platform has to offer right from the web browser. VOD is flourishing on both the legit and the pirate fields, so it’s about the technology and not how it’s used.

Of course, broadcasters are worried about the black market and the losses induced by it, but as more of them join the field, fewer people bother to look for illicit distribution channels.