ShowBox No Longer Available After Facing Numerous Ongoing Legal Issues

• Both ShowBox and MovieBox apps are now offline, following last week’s lawsuit that revealed their hosting ownership.
• There’s a cloud of uncertainty as to what is going on shrouding ShowBox as no official announcements of closure were made.
• Thousands of users are hoping it’s just a bug fixing process or a temporary downtime until new hosting space is set up.

The ShowBox servers are down, and people who try to use the app get a connection error message. As it is often the case with services that operate within shady areas of the law, nobody knows when they are down for good or not.

Since the people behind such services and apps are almost always guarding their anonymity like a precious gemstone, there has been no official statement made so anyone can claim whatever they want. Some report an extensive bug fixing process is going on, while others believe that the legal issues plaguing ShowBox have finally managed to bring a complete seizure of operations.

Showbox is a popular media streamer for Android, allowing users to stream TV shows, Netflix content, and even peer-to-peer torrented movies. Since ShowBox was only streaming this content to its users and didn’t allow any downloading activity to take place, it was supposedly operating somewhat lawfully, or not exactly illegally if you prefer. In spite of this incertitude of the law, film and TV show producers have repeatedly submitted their complaints to the authorities about ShowBox and its sibling on iOS, MovieBox. You see, both of these apps enjoyed huge popularity in their respective platforms, and the damage done to media producers was more than just significant.

Only last week, a coalition of movie studios have filed lawsuits against specific websites that hosted the files for ShowBox and MovieBox, with the result being a hand over of the ownership details by Cloudflare and Godaddy. With the situation taking this turn of events, the hosting website owners have no other option than reaching a settlement, the terms of which remained private. What was publicized instead was the following warning message on the site, pointed towards their visitors:

“Show Box is NOT a legitimate software platform for viewing copyright-protected movies. If you use ShowBoxApp to view copyrighted movies, the movie studios may be able to see your IP address and your viewing history. Movie studios are cracking down on illegal downloading and are filing lawsuits against users of ShowBox app. Websites that promote and/or distribute ShowBox are also being pursued by the movie studios for promoting illegal activity. It is not worth the trouble!”

It is evident from the above that ShowBox was under immense legal pressure lately, so the chances of this situation being an unannounced bug fixing frenzy are slim to none. MovieBox stopped working last week, and now comes the shutting down of ShowBox. Many claims that the same person or team of people are behind both apps anyway, so this development was to be expected. Is the team on a search for new infrastructure and content hosting websites? Possibly. That is how the similar 'Popcorn Time' streaming app has managed to elude seizure for many years now. Under all circumstances, and until the law on streaming becomes clear, users should protect themselves behind a VPN, or stay out of the process entirely.

Were you a ShowBox or MovieBox user? Are you planning to seek alternatives or are you going to give up streaming through this kind of platforms? Let us know in the comments below or join the discussion on our socials at Facebook and Twitter.