Responding to the pirate stigma and pressure from rightsholders, last year Amazon stepped in and disabled several popular pirate apps that were sideloaded onto users’ devices.
Amazon’s targets included LiveNetTV, a popular TV streaming app that had been around for a decade. This ad-supported app offered access to hundreds of channels in dozens of countries and was one of the most popular of its kind.
The block didn’t stop the app though. The developers released new versions that slipped by Amazon’s countermeasures and LiveNetTV was still working as usual at the start of the year.
Then, in late February, LiveNetTV’s channels went dark for another reason. The app still opened and the thumbnails were still there, but the streams were dead. The operators never offered an explanation but many people simply assumed that the developers had quit, possibly under legal pressure.
With the developers remaining silent for months, the shutdown of the popular app remained a mystery, until now.
LiveNetTV Shutdown and Settlement
In a press release shared with TorrentFreak, the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) takes partial credit for the app’s demise. The anti-piracy coalition identified and tracked down the two operators in Istanbul, Turkey, and reached a settlement that shut it down for good.
The two operators are identified only as A.B. and R.B., and the release notes that the settlement followed “legal proceedings,” without going into detail. It does highlight a mea culpa from the two, which they agreed to share after signing the settlement.
“What started as a way to make money online quickly got out of hand. We didn’t fully appreciate the legal consequences or the impact our actions would have.”
“Looking back, the financial gains were simply not worth everything we’ve lost,” they conclude.
Police Raid in February
The public statement reads as a cautionary tale. What it doesn’t say is what prompted it, and the press release doesn’t either, besides thanking the authorities in Türkiye and mentioning “legal proceedings.” However, ACE filled in the blanks when we asked.
“A search & seizure was executed in February by the local police and a court appointed expert,” an ACE spokesperson informed us. The shutdown that followed “was the operators’ decision after the search & seizure was executed and before settlement discussions.”
The raid was the result of a criminal complaint that MPA member companies filed at the prosecutor’s office in Istanbul, ACE says. The eventual settlement was signed in late June, four months after the operators were raided.
This means that the app wasn’t shut down by the police or ACE directly. Instead, the operators pulled the plug back in February, after the police came knocking on their doors.
Domain Name Takeovers
The LivenetTV Domain records fill in the rest of the timeline. Most of the transferred domains were originally registered in 2016, when the app first entered the scene. Ten years later they were signed over to the Motion Picture Association, which manages the ACE coalition.
The domains no longer point to an APK but instead they refer visitors to ACE’s Watch Legally page. The first domains were signed over late June, some others followed in August, and livenettv.xyz eventually switched earlier this month.
The press release notes that the domains had 2.4 million annual visits at the height of their popularity. That’s a small number compared to streaming sites, but ACE confirmed that this only counts website traffic, not the app’s actual usage, which was likely much higher.
ACE could not say whether the settlement involved financial compensation. That said, for a coalition whose press releases often include a million-dollar damages figure, the mea culpa from two pirate operators may be worth more than the money.
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The ten domains transferred to the Motion Picture Association, as shared by ACE, with the date each record was last updated according to WHOIS:
– livenettv.net (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.info (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.pro (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.cc (June 29, 2026)
– livenettv.co (June 30, 2026)
– livenettv.org (August 12, 2026)
– livenettv.me (August 13, 2026)
– livenettv.us (August 24, 2026)
– livenettv.tv (August 24, 2026)
– livenettv.xyz (September 8, 2026)
