Reality of IPTV and ‘dodgy’ firestick blocking ‘piracy shield’ launched to take down illegal streaming

A state of the art anti-piracy system set up to take down IPTV networks being accessed by the likes of 'dodgy' firesticks is closing in on one year of stopping illegal streaming.

And as it nears its anniversary, data has been revealed to show just how much of an impact the so-called 'Piracy Shield' has had.

Illegal streaming continues to be one of the largest headaches for those with the licence to films, TV shows, and live sporting events.

From Netflix and Amazon Prime Video to Sky Sports and TNT Sports, these huge companies spend a lot of money on either creating their own premium content or buying the copyright to broadcast content on their platforms.

People use apps side-loaded on to their media devices to watch IPTV (Getty Stock Images)

The latest deal between Sky, TNT and the Premier League has seen them spend a whopping £6.7 billion on securing the broadcasting rights to the most popular football competition in the world - so we're talking big money lost when people decide not to pay the likes of them to watch such services.

And with at least one million more people expected to stream content via IPTV across Europe by the end of the decade, the issue is only going to grow.

But those combatting piracy had hope in 2024, with a brand new anti-piracy system reportedly going further than ever before in the battle.

Piracy Shield explained

The system, which was created by The Authority for the Guarantee of Communications in Italy (AGCOM), went live in February protecting intellectual rights that are held by the big sporting players in Italy, which is primarily Prime Video, DAZN, and Sky.

It works by blocking illegal streaming of their content, whether that's of the Champions League, Serie A, or other sporting events only viewable behind their paywalls.

Part of the services it blocks includes IPTV, as well as even DNS and VPN services that exist to bypass geo-specific rules.

IPTV is used to stream the Premier League for free or a heavily discounted fee (Alex Livesey - Danehouse/Getty Images)

Has it had any success so far?

You could say that.

In its first month, 528 IP addresses as well as 114 illegal sites streaming premium content for free were blocked using Piracy Shield.

And this month, almost a year after its introduction, data provided to TorrentFreak shows that a total of 6,900 IP addresses have been blocked by the system.

On top of that, 35,000 domain names (another term for the website address) have been blocked by Piracy Shield.

The Netherlands accounts for almost 2,800 of these blocked IPs, with Germany just over 800, Romania just under 750, France 519, and US 280, Ukraine 262, and the UK 246.

This means that in Italy, illegal content being supplied via these thousands of IP addresses and web domains cannot be views in the country.

IPTV is growing in popularity (Getty Stock Images)

Does this mean illegal streaming will die?

It is certainly a sign that increased efforts is having a big say on access.

On the issue, one VPN provider, ZoogVPN, says: "If combined efforts of rights holders, ISPs, VPN and DNS service providers, and search engines prove to be fruitful, there won’t be piracy platforms with decent traffic in a matter of months.

"It is a marathon event, not a sprint, and the coming months will be crucial in determining its effectiveness."

Given how the first year has gone, we would be shocked if a similar style of system was not rolled out across Europe, including to the UK.