Operation Offsides seized hundreds of piracy domains while ad industry groups moved to cut revenue from more than 1,300 others.

If the illegal streaming site you’ve been using to watch the World Cup suddenly doesn’t exist anymore, or has been replaced by a giant JPEG announcing that “this site has been seized,” it’s because the U.S. Department of Justice and an international coalition of law enforcement agencies have shut down nearly 400 websites accused of illegally streaming FIFA World Cup matches. At the same time, a separate effort by the advertising industry has stripped nearly 1,400 more of the ad revenue that kept them alive.

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Governments and corporations have paired up to attack these sites with a one-two punch that involves taking some sites down and merely choking out the advertising revenue of some others. The latter is spearheaded by Trustworthy Accountability Group, or TAG... It’s a nonprofit backed by the digital advertising industry that says it has identified and demonetized 1,373 domains of piracy sites.

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