Reddit Shuts Down SoccerStreams Discussion Following Copyright Complaints

• Reddit complies with a DMCA notice, forcing moderators of pirating stream discussion to shut it down.
• The moderators have provided a temporary solution to the seizure, but it’s unlikely to hold for long.
• Similar shutdowns that occurred in Reddit last year, clearly indicate the social’s policy on the matter.

Reddit decided to shut down the “/r/soccerstreams” discussion on its platform, leaving its 420000 subscribers in disappointment. The discussion featured neat lists of domains and sources where people could watch football/soccer matches without paying a dime, and the popularity that is indicated by the number of its followers shows that there are many people out there seeking for up to date lists with working links. The subreddit, however, was destined to end soon, as piracy is not something that the US-based social news aggregation and discussion website put up with.

As the moderators pointed out to the subscribers of the particular subreddit, the Reddit administrators have ordered them to make changes to the thread otherwise it will get removed. The moderators decided to cease all user-related activity, as simply removing the links would result in new links getting posted and so on. The subreddit was not removed entirely, as it will now serve as the “home base” for the official Soccer Streams mod team. This means that it will be used as a noticeboard for news, updates, and announcements. They have even posted alternative ways for people to add live match links from now on. This is the full message posted by the moderators:

Obviously, the new subreddit that is given as a temporary solution for posting Premier League matches will also get banned soon, and Reddit is likely to enforce more permanent solutions to this matter rather than playing cat and mouse with their moderators. The other alternative path which is the Discord server is equally unlikely to stand the test of time, as anti-piracy policies are well established in that platform as well.

This is not the first time that Reddit is pressed to ban or shut down a subreddit following claims of copyright infringement. During 2018, they have banned “r/megalinks” as well as “/r/crackedsoftware” which had more than 244000 subscribers in the time of the shutdown. On all of these subreddits, as well as the “/r/soccerstreams” there was no actual content that infringed the claimed copyrights but only links to it. However, the DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright Act) law dictates that an online platform like Reddit is obliged to remove links to pirating domains following the submission of a relevant notice. If you want to take part in piracy-related discussions without breaking the Reddit rules, you can always hop to the “r/Piracy” subreddit and get your fix.

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