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Livehd7 Sports Piracy Network Shut Down By ACE, But Not For the First Time
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment says it has shut down Livehd7, a pirate site network providing free streams of Premier League, Serie A, and LaLiga matches. With over a quarter billion visits in the last 12 months alone, Livehd7 is a significant operation, but news of its demise may provoke déjà vu. In September 2023, ACE said that in collaboration with Egypt's Ministry of Justice, the operator of Livehd7 had been arrested, and the network shut down.
Since its inception in 2017, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has built a reputation for targeting online piracy operations regardless of scale and no matter where they operate.
Obtaining pirated content, whether movies, TV shows, or live streams of broadcast TV, has been a global consumer phenomenon for years. Yet despite significant civil lawsuits, arrests, and criminal prosecutions, a well-financed and centralized global enforcement strategy against suppliers and distributors, is a relative newcomer to the table.
Compared to previous efforts and considering the sheer scale of the objective, ACE is effective, certainly more than if each ACE member acted alone. Nevertheless, difficulties presented by a relatively new wave of pirate site operators in regions where attitudes to enforcement differ from those in the West, may be the biggest challenge yet.
ACE and Egyptian Authorities Shut Down Livehd7
In an announcement Tuesday, ACE said that a major sports piracy network, operating in the Middle East North Africa (MENA) region but accessible globally, has been shut down. The closure of the Livehd7 network, best known for offering live matches from the Premier League (England), LaLiga (Spain), and Serie A (Italy), was the result of collaboration with Egyptian authorities.
“We applaud the excellent work of Egyptian law enforcement in protecting the intellectual property rights of ACE’s sports media company members,” said Motion Picture Association (MPA) Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer, Larissa Knapp.
“The piracy of live sports is especially detrimental and poses an existential threat to sports leagues and their distribution partners, as a live sports broadcast loses substantial commercial value once a game ends. ACE remains committed to collaborating closely with the Egyptian Police to bring illegal operators to justice.”
According to ACE, the Livehd7 streaming network launched in late 2020 and made available through “at least” 85 associated domains. In addition to content owned by the top leagues in England, Spain, and Italy, the network also provided free access to matches from Germany’s Bundesliga, France’s Ligue 1 and Portugal’s Primeira Liga, plus UEFA and FIFA competitions.
A Global Problem With Additional Local Significance
ACE says that the network of sites received around 17 million monthly visits, over a quarter billion in the last 12 months alone. While players such as StreamEast currently receive twice as many monthly visits, Livehd7 sites are mostly presented in Arabic so are directly relevant to the MENA market. That’s something of which ACE member beIN, and its Legal Director of Anti-Piracy, Cameron Andrews, are acutely aware.
“Egyptian-operated pirate websites are popular across the Middle East and North Africa and Arabic-speaking markets generally, causing detrimental harm to our industry,” Andrews says.
“According to our research, in the MENA region alone, they cost beIN over a $1 billion USD a year and threaten the viability of our business, which in turn has a direct effect on what broadcasters can pay for sports rights. We are very pleased to see action being taken and ACE continues to set a precedent in the fight against piracy.”
To mitigate the effect regional sites can have on international markets, beIN has filed applications for site-blocking measures, including action in France early 2024. However, as ACE points out in its announcement Tuesday, platforms like Livehd7 expect that kind of response and are well-prepared to counter.
“The ring operators frequently built new domains to circumvent site blocking and other enforcement measures implemented in the countries where users accessed the illicit content,” ACE explained.
ACE Has Been Here Before
Early September 2023, ACE announced the dismantling of three piracy rings in Egypt. Described as ‘commercial-scale’ piracy operations, the trio were reportedly targeted by the police following ACE collaboration with the Egyptian Ministry of Internal Affairs. During that operation, the operators of Livehd7 and another platform, 3sktv, were reportedly arrested.
Around September 18, 2023, various Livehd7-branded domain names began diverting to the ACE anti-piracy portal, including the following:
livehd7i.com, livehd77.net, livehd77.org, livehd77.tv, livehd720.org, livehd7.top, livehd7.vip, livehd7.tv, livehd7.bio, livehd7.ink, liveshd7.com, livehd7.onl, livehd7.cam, livefhd7.com, livehd7.net
WHOIS records show that almost all of these domains now use the MPA’s nameservers, presumably after they were handed over in connection with the above. Another domain, livehd7.club, began diverting in January 2024 and an outlier, livehd7.today, may have been transferred over two years ago.
So the obvious question is this: if the operator(s) were arrested last August/September and subsequently handed over their domains, how did the Livehd7 network continue to operate while receiving 17 million visits per month?
Pirate Sites With Powerful Brands Don’t Die
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer, but one is straightforward; pirate sites don’t stay shut down for long in Egypt; at minimum, popular brands aren’t allowed to go to waste.
One of the most famous, EgyBest, was first shut down in 2019 but found itself being called out as a ‘notorious market’ in 2023 after amassing 130 million visits per month. MyCima was famously shut down in February 2023 but was back in business a couple of weeks later. Ultimately around 70 domains were redirected to ACE but it’s trivial to buy more.
Information About Subsequent Action Rarely Appear
The other big question relates to those running the sites and what happens to them after they’re arrested. No follow-up reports indicate suspects being charged with any crimes, going to trial, or receiving any kind of sentence. Also of potential importance is what they were actually arrested for.
It’s not uncommon for site operators in various countries to find themselves in hot water (or their sites blocked), not for piracy, but for involvement in gambling ads or anything else prohibited under local law. After the government receives a helpful tip from a rightsholder and takes action, the ends probably justify the means for those sending the tips. It may not prevent another site being launched, minus the offending features, however..
Whether Livehd7 will fade away is too early to say but ACE says that “all sites will be redirecting to the ACE ‘Watch Legally’ page.”
While there are no immediate signs of that happening in respect of domains operational right now, there could be a flood everything goes to plan.
The table below shows domains already under the MPA’s control at the top (registered at MarkMonitor), prominent others that are not, plus many that are operational or in various states of limbo. A basic Google search reveals a couple of dozen working sites as the top results but whether they’re operated by the same people is hard to say.
No accident, of course.
Note: Some domains not controlled by the MPA attempt to redirect to a specific domain universally flagged as suspicious. Rest assured, visitors don’t have a virus or any malware – YET, so any software on offer is not needed. The same applies to a page that looks somewhat like Facebook. Should that appear, filling in personal details is not recommended, for any reason, ever.
