Overview
- The Department of Justice led Operation Offsides and announced on Friday, June 26 that it had seized nearly 400 domains and disrupted servers tied to illegal FIFA World Cup streams in multiple countries.
- Trustworthy Accountability Group said on June 30 that it used its AdSec Threat Exchange to identify and remove advertising from 1,376 piracy domains and that 176 additional domains were already on its Pirate Domain Exclusion List.
- TAG shared its exclusion list with advertisers, agencies, and ad-tech intermediaries so programmatic ad buys will automatically block the listed piracy sites and stop ad dollars reaching them.
- U.S. law enforcement worked with international partners and rights-holders to target servers in places such as Peru, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Poland, and Colombia while TAG’s industry effort focused on cutting the revenue stream that fuels pirate operations.
- Officials warned the measures are disruptive but not permanent because operators can shift domains and infrastructure, so follow-up work will focus on finding and prosecuting operators and protecting consumers from malware and scams.