Acestream - is this legal?
Acestream is an internet platform that can be used to stream on-demand media content, such as soccer games. Here we explain whether the service is legal or not.
What is AceStream and is it legal?
If you search for streaming services on the Internet, you often stumble across AceStream. However, one question remains. Is the service legal or illegal? Ace Stream enables multimedia content to be transferred between PCs in real time. For example, television programs can be received over the Internet. Acestream is particularly popular for live football broadcasts. To put it simply, it works like this:
- Server: As a server, you either provide media content yourself or forward content.
- Clients: Clients are recipients of media content, but can in turn forward it or stream additional new content.
- The network: Clients and servers work together as a network. Servers and clients are nodes that send, receive or forward content. This principle of not storing data centrally, but of transferring it decentrally in a network from PC to PC via an intermediate server is also called a peer-to-peer (P2P) principle. Acestream uses bit torrent as a protocol.
Football streams on AceStream - usually illegal
Since Acestream only enables connections between clients, servers, between streamers, forwarders and users, the service itself is legal. However, AceStream can be misused for illegal purposes.
- So if soccer broadcasts - especially Champions League matches that otherwise only run on pay TV - are shared via AceStream, it is most likely illegal.
- A Pay TV broadcaster will hardly allow anyone to make this broadcast available to the public free of charge. So it is obviously an illegal source.
- This makes streaming, forwarding and receiving the football game illegal in this case.
Legal alternatives to AceStream
... with which you can experience the Bundesliga and UEFA Champions League live, we tell you in this practical tip.