Blame pointyball. It's the coming of the Superbowl that has thrown lovers of internet streams of dubious legality into a tizzy, as their favourite streaming sites were shut down to protect the TV rights of (American) football's biggest night.
As previously reported, Atdhe.net went black on Tuesday, after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security took a break from, y'know, hunting murderous terrorists, and slap some legal whatnot on a whole host of live streaming sites that fans of European footie know and love. Channelsurfing.net, rojadirecta.com and a bunch of other sites joined Atdhe on the U.S. government's naughty list.
[PRBREAK][/PRBREAK]"The illegal streaming of professional sporting events over the Internet deals a financial body blow to the leagues and broadcasters who are forced to pass their losses off to the fans in the form of higher priced tickets and pay-per-view events," U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara said in a statement, urging the court to order the Web site operators to permanently forfeit the domain names.
"With the Super Bowl just days away, the seizures of these infringing Web sites reaffirm our commitment to working with our law enforcement partners to protect copyrighted material and put the people who steal it out of business."
(Thanks to Cnet.com for the quote)
But the internet is smarter than all of us, thankfully, and Atdhe has already re-emerged in a new home. Not at Atdhe.me, which popped up right after the original site went down – that's a fake site and is probably up to all manner of nefarious doings – but at Atdhenet.tv. As ever, the Internet's bad apples are quicker on the jump than the authorities are.
So all is well again in the world of live streaming soccer.
Nervous disclaimer: The author of this post, Some Canadian Guys and Canadian Soccer News aren't advocating any specific course of action regarding the use or non-use of any of the aforementioned sites, and don't officially promote or advocate the illegal streaming of copyright-protected material. We're just sayin' is all.