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Anti-piracy coalition ACE has scored yet another victory by shutting down We-Play, one of Thailand’s biggest piracy portals. Local police raided Bangkok and arrested the alleged site operator. We-Play allegedly “caused” $1.2 million in losses per month, which translates to $0.50 for each visit to the site.
There’s no denying that the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) has done quite well in recent years.
The anti-piracy group, which represents leading rights holders such as Disney, Netflix, Warner Bros and beIN, systematically tracks down major piracy players.
These enforcement actions led to the disappearance of high profile targets including Openload, RapidVideo, Pelisplushd.net, Afdah.video and many others. This week we can add another name to the growing list.
ACE reports that together with local rights holder True Visions, it helped Thai police shut down We-Play.live. The site offered a wide variety of pirated content, including movies, TV shows, and sports. He reportedly generated revenue through subscriptions and ran advertisements for illegal gambling operations.
The Royal Thai Police’s Economic Crimes Suppression Division raided a condo in Bangkok where the 26-year-old site operator was arrested. He will be prosecuted on charges related to copyright infringement.
Jan van Voorn, head of global content protection at ACE, is pleased with the result. He hopes this will send a clear signal to other site operators in the region that hacking is not tolerated.
“ACE commends Thai police for their continued collaboration and effective takedown of this infamous streaming website,” van Voorn said. “The operator of the We-Play site network deserves a trial.”
We-Play had been in business for four years and had around 2.8 million visits per month according to ACE, citing data from SimilarWeb. However, according to True Visions and local news reports, the site had “only” 20,000 visitors per month.
Despite this confusion, all sources agree that the site caused around 50 million Thai baht ($1.4 million) in damage per month. This estimate is based on information provided by the local police.
With 20,000 visitors, that would mean that each visitor causes $70 in damages to rights holders. And even at 2.8 million monthly visits, each visit would take $0.50 from the rights holders’ coffers, which is still quite high.
In the wake of We-Play’s shutdown, Thai police also shut down the pirate IPTV service pglivetv.com.
With the support of ACE and True Visions, several servers were seized from local host World Internetwork. The 37-year-old operator of the IPTV subscription service was arrested at a residence in Bangkok, where a number of documents and devices were also seized.
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