Amazon is blocking illegal streaming on its Fire TV Stick

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Amazon has officially decided it’s had enough of being the unwitting hero of the sports-piracy underworld. 

According to new reporting from The Athletic, the company is now rolling out a device-level crackdown on those shady third-party apps that let Fire TV Stick owners stream sports they definitely did not pay for. 

The ban has already kicked off in France and Germany and is set to go global in the coming weeks, so consider this your friendly heads-up before your cousin’s “totally legit” football stream mysteriously disappears.

For years, the humble Fire TV Stick has carried a double identity: on the surface, a convenient way to binge The Boys. 

Underneath, a favorite vessel for “side-loaded” apps offering bargain-basement access to live sports. 

While Amazon has always blocked piracy apps in its official store, users have famously skirted those restrictions by installing apps from outside Amazon’s walled garden, sometimes with the assistance of a VPN and the confidence of someone who thinks tech companies don’t read the internet.

But the party may be winding down. TechRadar notes that this new device-level ban means even the classic “VPN + sideload = victory” hack won’t save you anymore. 

The timing is interesting, too: the crackdown lands just weeks after Amazon introduced the Fire TV Stick 4K Select, which quietly swapped Android for Linux. 

It’s harder to tinker with, harder to break into, and harder for piracy apps to crash the party in the first place. 

Amazon says the new stick features “beefed up security,” which might be code for “we saw what you were doing and we’re done now.”

An unnamed Amazon spokesperson delivered the official corporate scolding: Piracy is illegal, it exposes users to malware, and creators deserve to get paid, etc. 

The usual, but with a new twist, Amazon is now blocking piracy apps even when they’re downloaded from outside its store.

The shift comes as sports piracy continues to climb. 

A YouGov Sport survey commissioned by The Athletic found that roughly 4.7 million UK adults, about nine percent of the population, have streamed sports illegally this year. 

Unauthorized websites took first place as the method of choice, but Fire Sticks came in a comfortable second.

Looks like the world’s most popular little HDMI dongle is finally trying to clean up its reputation.