The Trump DOJ announced Friday that it has seized in the area of 400 websites that were illegally streaming 2026 World Cup matches.
The action amounts to a temporary victory in an ongoing game of wack-a-mole with illegal streamers, who are probably already back online at new web addresses doing their thing as I write this story.
But anyway, the DOJ can pretend that it’s doing something.
“We have seized hundreds of domains, used to illegally stream World Cup matches for profit, to disrupt the international networks that profit from the global popularity of the World Cup,” said Assistant Attorney General A. Tysen Duva, who works in the Criminal Division at the DOJ.
I’ve got some grift going on at an address on Pennsylvania Avenue that this Duva guy might want to look into.
“This operation illustrates the department’s respect for intellectual property rights and the responsibility of the United States as a host nation to protect the FIFA World Cup from criminals. The Criminal Division will continue to disrupt and, where appropriate, seek to prosecute these sites and the subjects responsible for this criminal activity,” Duva said.
Seriously, those who cut the cord to save money, and now rely on illegal streaming sites to be able to watch stuff, beware – a lot of these sites are used to spread malware that can be used against you and your personal data.
Yeah, free ain’t ever really free.