Amazon has escalated its war on illegal streaming apps and “dodgy sticks” – and this time, it’s coming for every Fire TV device you own.
Starting today, Amazon is rolling out a systematic crackdown on sideloaded IPTV apps across its entire Fire TV lineup, from the basic HD Firestick to the 4K Max, in partnership with Hollywood’s most powerful anti-piracy coalition.
If you’ve got a “dodgy” IPTV app installed on your Fire TV device, there’s a good chance it’s going to stop working – if it hasn’t already.
This represents a major escalation in Amazon’s fight against streaming piracy, and it’s being done in partnership with the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a coalition of entertainment companies that’s been waging war against illegal streaming for years.
The important distinction here is that Amazon isn’t blocking sideloading altogether on existing devices (as the new Fire TV Select stick does).
You can still install apps from outside the Amazon Appstore if you want to. But Amazon will now be scanning your device for apps that ACE has identified as providing access to pirated content – and blocking those specific apps from working.
What Amazon Told Us
An Amazon spokesperson provided Cord Busters with the following statement about the new blocking measures:
“Piracy is illegal, and we’ve always worked to block it from our Appstore.
“Through an expanded program led by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), a global coalition fighting digital piracy, we’ll now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our Appstore.
“This builds on our ongoing efforts to support creators and protect customers, as piracy can also expose users to malware, viruses, and fraud.”
The key phrase here is “expanded program” – this is a coordinated effort between Amazon and ACE, which represents some of the biggest names in entertainment, including Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros, Sky, the Premier League, and ironically, Amazon itself through Prime Video.
This Affects All Fire TV Devices, Not Just The Select
If you’ve been following our recent coverage, you might remember that Amazon launched the Fire TV Stick 4K Select (see my review) back in early October – a new streaming stick running the Vega operating system that can’t run sideloaded apps at all.
The Select stick’s Vega OS is built directly on Linux rather than Android, which means every app needs to be completely rewritten from scratch to work on it.
More importantly, Amazon confirmed that only apps from the Amazon Appstore can run on Vega OS devices – there’s no sideloading option, period.
That was a significant technical barrier to illegal IPTV, but it only affected one specific device – the cheapest model in Amazon’s 4K lineup.
Today’s news is different. This blocking system applies to all Fire TV devices running the traditional Android-based Fire OS. That includes:
Essentially, if you own a Fire TV device, Amazon can now detect and block illegal streaming apps on it.
This Isn’t The First Time Amazon Has Blocked Apps
Today marks the launch of this “expanded program” with ACE, but Amazon has actually been testing these waters for several months.
Back in late June 2025, AFTVnews reported that Amazon had blocked two popular piracy apps – FlixVision and LiveNetTV – from working on Fire TV devices.
At the time, the blocking seemed to be related to malware concerns rather than piracy alone. When users tried to launch these blocked apps, they were greeted with an error message stating the app had been blocked due to security concerns.
A few days later, additional piracy apps were blocked, suggesting Amazon was ramping up its enforcement efforts.
But those earlier blockings appeared somewhat ad hoc – apps were being blocked on a case-by-case basis, often when they posed clear security risks beyond just piracy.
What’s happening now is more systematic and far-reaching. Amazon has formalised its partnership with ACE, which means the blocking will be based on ACE’s extensive intelligence about illegal streaming operations rather than Amazon having to discover problematic apps on its own.
ACE has been fighting digital piracy for years and maintains detailed databases of illegal streaming services, apps, and websites.
They know which apps are providing unauthorised access to Premier League matches, Hollywood films, and premium TV shows – and now they’re sharing that intelligence directly with Amazon.
Though, as always – this will likely be an ongoing chase of cat and mouse.
What Is ACE And How Does Their “Trusted Notifier” Programme Work?
The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment is a coalition of more than 50 major entertainment companies and film studios, all united with a single mission: reducing online piracy of copyrighted material.
Founded in 2017, ACE’s membership reads like a who’s who of the entertainment industry. Amazon, Apple TV+, BBC Studios, Canal+, Disney, HBO, Netflix, Paramount, Sky, Sony Pictures, Warner Bros – they’re all part of the coalition.
They’ve been quite successful, shutting down major piracy operations including anime site Zoro.to in 2023, FMovies (one of the world’s largest piracy sites) in 2024, and sports streaming site StreamEast in September 2025.
But one of ACE’s most powerful tools isn’t legal action – it’s “trusted notifier” agreements.
These are confidential arrangements ACE has negotiated with various internet intermediaries – domain registries, registrars, advertising companies, payment processors, and now, it appears, streaming device manufacturers.
The basic concept is simple: ACE provides these companies with information about illegal content or services, and because ACE is recognised as a “trusted” source with expertise in identifying piracy, the companies can take action more quickly than they would based on reports from random third parties.
Amazon has confirmed this is an “expanded program” led by ACE, and that they recognise piracy is a global challenge that requires industry partners to work together.
The implication is clear: this trusted notifier programme is growing, and Fire TV might just be the beginning.
The Pressure From Sky And The Premier League
To understand why Amazon is taking such aggressive action now, you need to look at the pressure the company has been under from broadcasters – particularly Sky.
In February 2025, Sky launched a fierce public attack on Amazon, with chief operating officer Nick Herm claiming Fire TV Sticks accounted for “probably about half of the piracy” of Premier League football in the UK.
Premier League logo (Photo: Deposit Photos)
Speaking at the FT Business of Football Summit, Herm didn’t mince words: “If you speak to friends and colleagues, [or] you watch football, people will know that you can get jail-broken Firesticks, and you can access pirated services on Firesticks.”
Sky claimed the situation had become so widespread that football fans at some grounds had started chanting “we’ve got our Fire Sticks” during matches.
Some supporters were even wearing shirts with “Fire Sticks” printed on them – treating illegal streaming almost like a badge of honour.
Sky’s specific demand was that Amazon should “lock down or impose controls and restrictions on the use of side-loaded unofficial apps on the devices.”
At the time, Amazon pushed back, defending its position and highlighting its work with ACE to shut down piracy operations.
The company also pointed out that it had always encouraged customers to use legal channels and included on-device warnings about the risks of installing apps from unknown sources.
But the pressure didn’t let up. The Premier League has been equally vocal about the Fire TV Stick problem, with multiple high-profile convictions of IPTV sellers featuring modified Fire TV devices.
The launch of Vega OS on the Select stick was the first major technical response – creating a device that simply couldn’t run unauthorised apps at all.
Today’s announcement is another response – bringing similar controls to the millions of existing Fire TV devices already in people’s homes.
The “Dodgy Firestick” Problem: Recent UK Cases
The “dodgy Firestick” phenomenon has become a massive problem in the UK, with modified Fire TV devices featuring prominently in numerous criminal prosecutions over the past year.
Confiscated IPTV Devices (Photo: Cheshire Police)
These cases illustrate exactly why Amazon is under such pressure to act – and why the entertainment industry is so determined to shut down the illegal IPTV trade.
The Liverpool Operation
Jonathan Edge, 29, received a three-year and four-month prison sentence for running a Firestick modification operation from his home in Liverpool.
Edge had been charging £30 per modified Firestick, with discounts for bulk purchases, making at least £15,000 from his operation. He used Facebook to advertise his services and delivered the modified sticks to customers across the region.
What made this case particularly significant was that Edge received a separate concurrent sentence specifically for watching the illegal streams himself – a stark warning that even users, not just sellers, can face prison time.
The £1 Million Premier League Scheme
Steven Mills, 58, from Shrewsbury, was sentenced to two and a half years in prison for operating an illegal streaming service that made £1 million over five years.
Mills’s operation used custom apps on Fire TV devices to distribute Premier League matches to over 30,000 subscribers. He even created tutorial videos to help customers access the illegal streams, showing just how sophisticated these operations had become.
The Mass Crackdowns
In July 2024, authorities targeted 40 illegal IPTV operators in a coordinated sweep across the UK, from Essex to Dundee.
The operation led to three significant arrests, with digital devices and modified Firesticks seized from homes in Nottingham, Widnes, and Stockton-on-Tees. Over 3,000 online adverts for illegal services vanished from social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and X.
Photo: Cheshire Police Cyber Crime Unit
Two months later, in September 2024, police and FACT investigators turned up at 30 homes across the UK, from London to North Yorkshire, targeting suspected sellers of modified Firesticks.
A 42-year-old man in Newport was arrested, with multiple digital devices including several Firesticks seized as evidence.
What About Legitimate Sideloading?
This is where things get messy, because sideloading isn’t inherently illegal.
Some users sideload alternative media players like Kodi (which is entirely legal software, despite its association with piracy add-ons). Others install apps that aren’t available in the UK Amazon Appstore but are perfectly legal to use. Developers sideload apps they’re testing.
Amazon says they’re only blocking apps “identified as providing access to pirated content” – implying legitimate sideloaded apps should be fine.
But there’s an obvious risk of false positives. Kodi is the perfect example – the software itself is completely legal with millions of legitimate users, but it can be modified with add-ons that provide pirated content.
Will Amazon block Kodi entirely, or only specific versions pre-configured with piracy add-ons?
Combined with the locked-down Vega OS on the Select stick, it’s clear Amazon has decided that maintaining a totally open platform isn’t worth the legal headaches and pressure from broadcasters like Sky and the Premier League.
Whether this will significantly reduce Fire TV piracy is debatable. IPTV sellers are resourceful – when one app gets blocked, they’ll create a new one under a different name.
Some illegal services have already moved to web-based apps that run in browsers. And there are plenty of alternative Android TV boxes out there that Amazon has no control over.
But Amazon doesn’t need to completely eliminate piracy – they just need to make it difficult enough that the “dodgy Firestick” stops being their brand problem.
If fewer people are chanting about Fire Sticks at football matches and fewer criminal prosecutions feature Amazon devices, that’s probably good enough.
It’s also worth noting that Amazon’s emphasis on malware isn’t just corporate spin. The FlixVision case showed that illegal streaming apps can do genuinely nasty things – harvesting IP addresses, serving adult ads, turning devices into proxy network nodes.
Legitimate apps in the Amazon Appstore go through security reviews. Sideloaded piracy apps don’t.
For most Fire TV users watching Netflix, Disney+, and BBC iPlayer legitimately, nothing changes. Official apps will work exactly as before.
But if you’ve got illegal IPTV apps installed, they’re likely living on borrowed time.
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