The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced settlements with three U.S.-based illegal streaming (IPTV) operators. As part of the settlements, those operators were required to pay over $2 million in financial compensation to ACE.
The illicit services include Anytime TV, Cobra Servers, Elite Servers, and Lost Highway Media, each of which was engaged in mass copyright infringement. These piracy services collectively had thousands of subscribers and received hundreds of thousands of domain visits annually.
Among the domains that will be transferred to ACE as part of the settlements are anytimetv.us, anytimewebhosting.com, elite-servers.com, losthighway-media.com, and webhostsupply.com.
At the time this article was published, an ICANN ‘Whois’ lookup for ‘anytimetv.us’ responded with ‘No registry RDAP server was identified for this domain’ and ‘Failed to perform lookup using WHOIS service: TLD_NOT_SUPPORTED.’ Owner names for the domains ‘anytimewebhosting.com’ and losthighway-media.com’ were ‘redacted for privacy.’ MarkMonitor Inc was listed as the owner of ‘elite-servers.com’ and ‘webhostsupply.com.’
Working with its studio members, last year ACE had identified the operators of the services, which were illegally distributing thousands of movies and television shows and began taking enforcement action. After being confronted by ACE and threatened with potential legal action, the operators agreed to pay financial compensation, shutter their illegal services permanently, cooperate with ACE, and transfer their services’ domains.
Further reading
ACE finalizes settlements with three operators who agree to pay over $2 million collectively for copyright infringement. Press release. August 14, 2024. Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE)
Why it matters
“These landmark settlements should serve as a warning to illegal streaming operators about the severe penalties they will face for breaking copyright law, including legal actions, substantial financial settlements and fines, and jail time,” said Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association. “Although the multimillion-dollar settlements may seem significant, this figure still represents only a fraction of the losses caused by copyright infringement. The theft of digital content harms both local and foreign economies, threatens jobs, undermines investment, reduces tax contributions to governments, and stifles creativity.”
