cCloud TV facing DCMA challenges but says its live cable TV streaming service 'isn't illegal'

It has been less than 48 hours since the media discovered the existence of cCloud TV, a new service that enables users to illegally live stream premium cable channels directly to their mobile devices, and the service is already experiencing opposition.

cCloud TV launched its service on Facebook in March and was hoping that the illegal service would gain more users through word of mouth. On Wednesday (27 May), IBTimes UK, together with several other media outlets, wrote about its existence and the developers behind the service posted on their Facebook page that they were "overjoyed" with the coverage.

However, in the same day, GitHub, an open source code repository disabled the cCloud TV domain, taking the service down temporarily for several hours, and now cCloud's creators say they have started receiving their first takedown requests due to the US Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DCMA).

"Dear users, We have received our first DMCA, But we are fighting back best way we can to keep the project alive," the admin team for cCloud TV wrote on its Facebook page on Thursday (28 May).

Later, the team acknowledged the GitHub suspension, but said that it wasn't worried: "That won't stop us. We saw that coming, that's why there is always back-up plans. Since our web app doesn't need to depend on any server, it can be hosted anywhere locally, or on the web."

Today the service is back up, and one of the cCloud admins quoted the character Bane from The Dark Knight Rises: "It doesn't matter who we are... what matters is our plan. No one cared who I was until I put on the mask."

Several new channels have been added, including several HBO channels dubbed in Spanish and more sports channels, such as Fox Sports HD, Sports Net, beIN Sports and BT Sports, which work at the time of publication. There is also now a live chat function where users can report to the admins which live streams are not working on which devices.

The cCloud TV team has told IBTimes UK that it received the DCMA request from the NBA because cCloud TV livestreams ESPN, and we captured a screenshot featuring the NBA in our previous article.

However, the creators don't think that what they are doing is illegal.

"cCloud is nothing but a cloud-based player. If you were to look at the source code, there is nothing but html, css and a lot of JavaScripts. cCloud is depending on links which can be found anywhere on the web which are not hosted on cCloud since there is not database it all," cCloud TV's lead developer, who is based in the US, told IBTimes UK.

"We are not broadcasting, we just are syncing links that can be found anywhere and making it easier for users to play them. Users look for IPTV m3u8 links on Google and they test it using VLC player. If the links are good, they will share it using x.co, a Go Daddy link shortening service – so as far as cCloud goes, it has multiple players depending on type of the device they use."

cCloud TV's developer says he relies on a community of administrators from around the world to find the IPTV links and add them to the player. To him, the project is "just for fun", and he does not think that what they are doing is illegal.

"In my opinion, it's not illegal. It would have been illegal if we were to host the actual streams, but we are not, since all of the links are being synced from some other servers, and there is no crawler for cCloud which automatically syncs streams," he said, adding that cCloud TV stands for Community Cloud TV.

"It's all done by users who find the links manually using short links only. Each user does 25 links and even for them it's an easy process – they just look for m3u8 links, and if it works they make short links out of it, that's all.

"I just tried to make life easier for users so they could work as a community to have simple live IPTV streams."