News

ACE Action Prompts Pirate Giants, Openload and Streamango, to cease all operations

LOS ANGELES (October 31, 2019) — The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) today achieved another major win when the operator of two giant sources of illegal, unauthorized content, agreed to cease all operations. Prior to this ACE action, Openload and Streamango were massive piracy outfits. Openload alone had more than 1,000 servers in Romania, France, and Germany, and generated more traffic than many leading sources of legal content, including Hulu, HBO Go, Sky, and the websites for CBS News and NBC News. It provided pirated content to 72% of the top 50 illegal video streaming and linking sites in the world.

“ACE is committed to protecting the legal marketplace for creative content through a range of legal and operational tactics—and this is a great step toward that goal,” said Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association and Chair of ACE. “For years, these two pirate operations failed to take meaningful action to stop the dissemination of the illegal content, harming creators and misleading consumers.”

The Office of the U.S. Trade Representative (USTR) named Openload in its 2018 Out-of-Cycle Review of Notorious Markets, citing its practice of incentivizing users to upload unauthorized content in exchange for free downloads.

As a result of this ACE action, the operator behind both pirate operations is required to stop operating the services and pay a significant damage award.

Most recently, ACE has also secured permanent injunctions against Vader Streams, Dragon Box, and TickBox.

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About ACE:

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) is a global coalition dedicated to protecting the dynamic legal market and reducing online piracy. The worldwide members of ACE are Amazon, AMC Networks, BBC Worldwide, Bell Canada and Bell Media, Canal+ Group, CBS Corporation, Channel 5, Charter Communications, Constantin Film, Discovery, Foxtel, Grupo Globo, HBO, Hulu, Lionsgate, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer (MGM), Millennium Media, NBC Universal, Netflix, Paramount Pictures, SF Studios, Sky, Sony Pictures Entertainment, Star India, Studio Babelsberg, STX Entertainment, Telefe, Telemundo, Televisa, Univision Communications Inc., Village Roadshow, Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures, and Warner Bros. Entertainment Inc. ACE draws upon the global content protection resources of the Motion Picture Association in concert with the internal content protection expertise of ACE members.