Amazon has said it’s going to crack down on applications that stream pirated TV content to users via its Fire TV platform, having faced significant pressure to do so from industry groups and broadcasters.
A report by Enders Analysis earlier this month raised headlines when it placed the blame for rising streaming piracy squarely on the shoulders of tech giants like Amazon and Google. The report accused Amazon of basically doing nothing to prevent developers launching applications that livestreamed pirated content on the Fire TV platform. At the same time, it criticized Google and Microsoft for neglecting their digital rights management tools, which are used by content creators to try and takedown pirated content.
Following that report, Amazon told the BBC it would step up its non-existent efforts to combat piracy apps, and it appears to have wasted little time in doing so. In the last week, there have been numerous reports of several of the most popular piracy apps on Fire TV devices, including Flix Vision and Live NetTV, being taken offline.
AFTVNews reported that the applications have been blocked at the system level, using a “blacklist tool” created by Amazon to prevent certain apps from running on its software. TechDoctorUK adds in a video on YouTube that Amazon had previously only used the tool to take down apps that messed with its own business, taking over the user interface and removing ads that generate revenue for the company.
Although Amazon says the latest move is about preventing piracy, AFTVNews points out that the company may also have selfish reasons to take down the latest apps, as at least two of them – Blink Streamz and Ocean Streamz – were considered to be security risks. Their APK files have been flagged by various antivirus tools as being “harmful”, because they also appear to take over the device’s CPU and network and use them to generate revenue.
FlatPanelsHD elaborates on this further, saying that applications that do this are often used to create large botnets of infected machines that can be hijacked to make money for their developers when they’re online. The botnets scour the internet clicking ads to generate revenue, which ultimately filters back to the app developers.
As such, it could be interpreted that Amazon is more interested in trying to prevent these fake clicks, which costs its advertisers a lot of money.
That said, Amazon can at least now claim that it’s taking action to try and prevent Fire TV from becoming a haven for illegal streaming content. It will probably be able to make even more progress in future, as it’s planning a massive overhaul of Fire TV in the near future, shifting away from the Android operating system to its own software, Vega OS.
Once the new Fire TV powered by Vega OS launches later this year, Android TV applications will no longer be compatible, and developers will have to rewrite their code to run on the new platform. Amazon has said that all Fire TV apps will be vetted and must be given its stamp of approval before being published in its marketplace. At the same time, the shift to Vega OS will likely make it impossible for apps to be “sideloaded” onto Fire TV devices.
