Streamed, the live sports streaming engine that supplied embeddable video players to dozens of piracy sites, has shut down.
Its business was wholesale rather than retail. Other sites offered live sport without hosting any of it themselves, by embedding Streamed's players. The homepage now states that the service is no longer operating and thanks users for their support. No reason is given.
The closure covers the operation's several front doors. The notice sits on streamed.pk, strmd.link redirects to it, and streamed.st carries the same message.
The Motion Picture Association had named Streamed in its annual notorious markets submission to the United States Trade Representative. Citing Similarweb figures, the MPA said about 30 sites were using Streamed in July, drawing 463 million visits between them, up from 29 sites and 134 million visits a year earlier.
Many of the dependent sites were what the MPA called "hydra sites", among them HydraHD, Rivestream, StreamEX and Mapple. Cineby was also named, before it closed.
Streamed's own traffic had been growing quickly. Similarweb recorded 19.76 million visits to streamed.pk in September, 56 per cent more than in August. Nearly half came from the United States, followed by Canada and the United Kingdom.
Mapple, which the MPA said relied on Streamed, was returning 404 errors for some sports streams when TorrentFreak published.
There is no sign of enforcement. The notice mentions no action and the domains carry no seizure banner. The MPA has claimed credit for the earlier closures of Cineby and AnimeFLV but has not commented on this one, and the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment has not commented either; TorrentFreak says neither group responded before publication.
A settlement looks unlikely for a straightforward reason: the closure notice points former users to five other sports streaming sites, among them ppv.st, pitsport.st and thedaddy.pk. Of the last, the notice observes that it has "lots of ads".
The MPA's own term for the sites in this ecosystem is the one that repays attention.
A hydra is an animal that grows heads when a head is removed. The association applied the word to the sites that used Streamed, in a submission arguing for action against the engine that fed them.
Streamed has now removed its own head, voluntarily, and the wound has produced five replacements, with addresses.
The Department of Unnecessary Research notes that this is a considerable improvement on the mythological arrangement, in which the new heads have to be located by the person holding the sword.
Our analysts observe a further efficiency. The notorious markets list is a list of sites, and it grows when sites are identified. This closure has identified five.
The notice also warns that one of the five is heavy on advertising. No enforcement body has yet matched that standard of consumer guidance.