Piracy site EZTV shuts down after crazy takeover scheme

EZTV founder NovaKing has shut down his site after losing control of a number of domain names and data in a hostile takeover, Torrentfreak reported.

The torrent group’s woes began in January 2015 when the .IT domain name registry (NIC.IT) suspended eztv.it due to “inaccurate WHOIS information”.

When NIC.IT put the EZTV domain back on the market, it was sold on auction to a UK-based company called Ezcloud Limited, which is similar to the name EZTV used in its whois information previously.

Ezcloud set eztv.it to act as a reverse proxy, serving content from the real EZTV domain (then at eztv.ch), but displaying its own ads over it.

The impostors then offered to either sell the domain back to NovaKing, or go into a deal to share advertising revenue.

NovaKing rejected the offer, reportedly telling the impostor to “have fun with the domain”.

This would not be the end of the matter, as Ezcloud Limited went on to fake the name of its director and convince the EuroDNS registrar to hand over control of the eztv.se domain to the impostors.

NovaKing’s e-mail address was hosted at the .se domain, and with control of it the impostors were able to reset all his passwords.

They seized control of almost all his domains, and prompted a scare that EZTV’s servers had also fallen under their control.

EZTV locked down its site and started a security audit to ensure the impostors had not gained access to their servers.

Finally, even EZTV’s new .CH domain fell into Ezcloud’s hands.

Torrentfreak reported that although it is possible for the group to start again under a different name, NovaKing elected to shut it down completely.

It said EZTV was meant to be a fun, non-profit project, and the Ezcloud takeover had sucked the fun out of it.

Torrent indices such as The Pirate Bay, KickassTorrents, and BT-chat have already suspended the EZTV user account on their platforms, and posted warnings to inform their users of the EZTV takeover.

“Warning. This domain has been taken over by scammers. Stay away,” The Pirate Bay states in its old EZTV listings.

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