Rabat – BeIN Media Group and Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition against digital piracy, announced on Thursday the closure of nine illegal piracy websites in Egypt as well as the arrest of two of its operators.
Over the past two years, the nine Egyptian websites attracted around 166 million visitors in numerous North African and Middle Eastern countries including Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates.
BeIN and ACE have coordinated the crackdown campaign on piracy websites with Egyptian law enforcement, leading to the seizure of domains, assets, and IT equipment.
The list of shuttered sites includes yalla-shoot.today, yallah-shoot-kora.com, yalla-shoot-arabia.com, and yalla-shoot-arabia.net in addition to hdkoora.com, kooora4k.com, korawatch.com, kooralive-online.com, and alqnassport.com.
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In a press statement, Jan van Voorn, the head of ACE, said that “ACE and beIN take an extremely active approach to tackling piracy, customizing our actions to most effectively combat various piracy methods – in Egypt, across the entire region, and globally.”
Van Voom thanked Egyptian authorities “for their partnership and engagement in seeing this action through and for acknowledging and prioritizing the theft of intellectual property as a serious crime.”
A beIN spokesperson said that this is “another victory for sports fans, players and clubs of all levels across the sporting eco-system,” stressing that “beIN is determined to support the fight against broadcast piracy throughout the region to protect leagues and fellow broadcasters.”
BeIN, which holds the rights to most significant football leagues and tournaments in the region, joined ACE in April 2022 to consolidate its efforts in countering digital privacy impacting the company’s streaming services.
In June, BeIN and ACE took down 18 Cairo-based piracy operators, bringing the total number of illegal sites shut down this year to 27.
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