Pirate sites under investigation for using Twitch to stream movies

Websites using Twitch to stream the latest Hollywood movies and TV shows from Disney, Warner Bros, Netflix and more are facing an investigation.

You can find just about anything on Twitch from cooking streams to bikini-clad models splashing around in hot tubs, and if you look hard enough, you can even find a movie or two.

According to a report by TorrentFreak, some pirate websites have been using Twitch to help save money, but the tactic could ironically end up being far more costly.

In a DMCA subpoena application, the MPA along with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment asked for information about a number of pirate sites and who is running them such as their names, physical addresses, phone numbers and IP addresses.

The application was filed earlier this month in a California court.

The two groups claimed that Suicide Squad, Salt, Gold Rush and Deadliest Catch were being offered by pirate sites, but don’t host the content on their own sites. Instead, URLs listed in the documents linked to videos on Twitch’s servers.

It turns out that there were in fact many Twitch accounts set up to stream the pirated content. One of the accounts shown by TorrentFreak paints quite the picture of just how many users were tuning in with 46,000 hours watched in just a single month.

While some of these pirates are a bit more secretive in their dealings, others are quite brazen. Earlier this year, over 6,000 people tuned in at once to watch Morbius on Twitch after a channel advertising “Morbius 24/7” went viral.