Court Orders Google to Wipe IPTV Smarters Pro From Play Store * TorrentFreak

Top-tier Spanish football league LaLiga has been waging war against pirate sites and services for the past several years. In common with the UK’s Premier League and Serie A in

Italy, LaLiga focuses on unlicensed live-streaming platforms that offer cheap or even free access to subscription-based content. LaLiga’s prime targets include free web-based

streaming sites and subscription IPTV providers. All services face potential ISP blocking under dynamic injunctions, which have flexibility built-in to tackle pirate

countermeasures more effectively. When LaLiga labeled dozens of software video players as piracy tools last year, the threshold for illegality suddenly became much less clear.

LaLiga Targets Video Players In a submission to the European Commission in early 2022, LaLiga called out around 20 IPTV services and 30 streaming sites. A cursory glance would’ve

revealed the unlicensed nature of these platforms, but LaLiga also nominated more than 80 software video players, many of them available for download on Google Play and Apple’s

App Store. “It is important to note that all of these player applications allow the consumption of an innumerable amount of audiovisual contents such as sports, movies, series TV

channels, etc. In other words, this problem affects the entire audiovisual and entertainment industry in general,” LaLiga said (pdf). Just some of the Video Apps Nominated by

LaLiga The goal of the submission was to have some or all of these applications named in the EU’s Counterfeiting and Piracy Watch List 2022. When the report was published early

December 2022, just one of the most popular apps was listed in the ‘Piracy Apps’ section. Called Out By European Commission “Stakeholders from the audiovisual sector reported

IPTV Smarters for inclusion in the Watch List as an IPTV turnkey solution from India,” the Commission wrote (pdf). “It is reported to be an IPTV software solution, which trades

under the brand name WHMCS Smarters and offers website design and development, customized apps on several platforms and a billing platform. The operators also offer an IPTV media

player through the IPTV Smarters Pro APP.” By also mentioning the WHMCS side of the Smarters business, the European Commission not only went beyond the functionality of the IPTV

Smarters Pro app, but did so under a ‘Piracy App’ heading, using text that carried zero allegations of piracy. Smarters Player (Credit: WHMCSSmarters) The EC’s approach was

nothing new, however. Last October the Motion Picture Association nominated WHMCS Smarters for ‘Notorious Market’ status in its submission to the United States Trade