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Illegal Streaming Services, Questions
TruthSeeker1987
Barred
Hi everyone,
I'm new to LET (I believe that’s the common abbreviation here), and I came across this forum while researching some providers behind a service that calls itself “The Tower.”
Their site:
https://client.tower-server.com/index.php?rp=/store/the-tower-jshares
Example advertisement:
https://www.reddit.com/r/JellyfinShares/comments/1pgk026/the_tower_5pb_media_server_ushosted_10gbps_upload/
From what I can tell, several of the hosting providers used by this operation are active here, so this seemed like the best place to ask for guidance and bring this to the attention of the community.
The service in question appears to be operating a large-scale unlicensed media/streaming platform. I’ve contacted multiple hosts regarding the IPs involved, but after about a week I’ve received no replies and seen no visible action. Since LET is known for providers who care about their reputation and compliance, I thought it was worth raising the issue here directly.
For context: I started looking into this after a 55-year-old online friend of mine purchased a “yearly plan” from this service—over €200—and ended up being scammed. So there are both copyright and consumer-fraud concerns.
IPs linked to the service:
PureVoltage – 162.249.168.179
PureVoltage – 192.34.101.21
ReliableSite – 199.127.63.5
HostUS – 77.83.241.35
GSL – 103.1.215.87
CloudVider – 185.193.157.86
OVH (UK) – 57.129.130.174
LeadWeb (NL) – 94.75.213.19
I’m not here to accuse any provider of knowingly supporting this, only to share information in case it helps the relevant hosts investigate or take appropriate action.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, and I appreciate any advice on the proper way to handle issues like this within the LET community.
Comments
On LET you can tag people with the 'at' symbol, you'll get a list of possible usernames, like so:
@Clouvider, @OVH_UK, @ReliableSiteHosting, @PureVoltage etc.
They will get a notification that they were tagged here.
That's interesting part. So, your "friend" looked for illegal services from third-parties and got scammed. Noice. And now you seek justice? Damn, karma is a bad woman isn't she?
Do not look for illegal services and do not pay money for something you definitely know is not a valid source of data. Your "friend" 100% knew what he did.
o be clear, I’m not condoning illegal activity. I personally handle pirated content on my own terms—privately, on my own server. The “friend” I’m referring to is someone from a gaming Discord community I’m part of. Given their limited technical knowledge, I wanted to help them and see if some form of accountability could be pursued.
It’s important to understand that just because someone seeks out a service that’s popular or has hundreds of users doesn’t automatically mean they fully grasp the risks. For someone who’s 55+—or even older—it’s much easier to be duped. They might trust a service simply because it seems legitimate or widely used, without realizing the scale of the operation or the potential for fraud.
If we simply adopt the “your fault for seeking it” attitude, we ignore the reality that these services shouldn’t exist in the first place. People shouldn’t have to navigate illegal, large-scale operations just to access content. Scams like this are entirely preventable, and the responsibility ultimately lies with those running these illicit platforms—not the individuals who get misled.
@Clouvider, @OVH_UK, @ReliableSiteHosting, @PureVoltage @HostUS @GSLNetworks.
You can find this illegally operated instance here: https://jellyfin.tower-server.com/
You can see this is an active media instance, it's DNS loadbalanced between the above IP I mentioned. DNS resolved to them actively.
What a stupid thread
I actually disagree. I’m actively asking for alternatives beyond what’s posted on LET within this thread. Highlighting scams and illegal operations that are quietly running on providers isn’t “stupid”—it’s proactive.
Snitches get stitches
It's also not up to providers to determine what their client legally has licensing for. That's a job for the license holders to send legal notices for it. Providers can't be expected to know what deals someone does or doesn't have with a license holder, and cannot be expected to act as legal experts. If content violates the law by existing alone that's one thing, but movies and television shows are not inherently illegal, only under certain conditions. The owners of the content are expected to submit DMCA notices if the customer does not possess the permission to host the content. As you likely are not the rights holder to the content, your word has no value.
Probably proxied anyway to the main server, can't do much about them.
You can't take them down if even the authorities can't/won't lol.
You're wasting your time for €200 (which isn't even yours).
Honestly, the way you've reported will lead to approximately zero action being taken by any of the providers IMHO. You're essentially a random person saying to a company "one of your customers is doing something I don't like". It's not up to the company to agree with your complaint or not, they're just providing a server and don't get involved with what it's used for unless there's a formal legal complaint.
The correct approach, if you actually want to persue it, is to determine who the relevant copyright holders are, notify them and let them, if they can be bothered, go through the procedures of sending DMCA notices. If that doesn't work, as the copyright holder, they could take alternative legal action against the site operator.
But just coming here to complain, with no connection to the copyright holders at all, is kind of pointless.
It's true that it's probably a TOS violation for almost every provider, but it would require significant effort to follow up and prove that - actually probably much more than just forwarding on a DMCA takedown - and they'd be at risk of violating their own TOS to take action without putting in the effort to verify that themselves. If the customer isn't directly causing them a problem, and there are no complaints from the copyright holders themselves, it's understandable that they wouldn't take any action.
Well this has been educational so far, I've never really been interested in such markets (Server Hosting) but this is very revealing, so even if it's highly clear (E.g they have more movies & TB shows listed than Disney, Sky, HBO, Paramount, Netflix, Prime) combined, there is the "Let be" mentality of it's always not my fault? even when someone like me points it out?
It needs copy-right holders to follow up like I can casually get Disney on the phone? your right I don' care to much to pursue this matter much further, but isn't that telling? if someone isn't willing to waste weeks of there life following up providers just turn a blind-eye even when notified?
Well said, again i'm not here to make demand it's really just an interest in helping out someone, as I naturally figured with such evidence, it would be a slam dunk service suspension for providers to action, like you say there own ToS will say as such, especially US based providers which many of these are. It's not like it's a "maybe" situation, it's very clear they are hosting & serving illegal content afterall.
If they are hosting Disney content then the takedown notices need to come from Disney's lawyers, correct. You cannot be expected to act on Disney's behalf because you technically have no knowledge that there isn't an agreement between the customer and Disney, and the provider has no obligation to verify that such an agreement exists or doesn't exist.
Of course you and I both know it's illegal, but that's instinct and pattern recognition, not a basis for a legal response.
< "That is a login page sarr, please send a link to the pirated content"
It being login/paywalled makes taking this stuff down harder.
The bigger question is: is piracy wrong? As we all know the fantasy of paying Netflix $5 a month for unlimited viewing of everything in a single service, or expecting DRM to stop every new tv show and movie being a webrip from streaming services have failed. If people do not want to pay for media because there is a better service elsewhere, the media companies do not deserve to profit.
Agreed, I do think it's not wrong, especially for personal use my gripe with this hole situation is the abuse of being a "provider" of stolen content, and charging others access to it.
Unfortunately, what @ralf said is true. The best thing your friend can do is to open a PayPal dispute or something like that depending on the payment processor.
Again i'm happy to notify Disney etc, i'll send the obligatory email today, the post was more about notifying hosts here, I only found LET googling the hosts, and LET was a common thread for 3 of them, so I safely assumed this is where the provider is "Finding" his hosts and wanted to give them a "heads" up sort to speak, but i'm quickly understanding there is no solution via this path and i'll notify copyright holders directly.
Afterall i assume Disney will just be sending these notifiations to host, and. I figured I could save them the hassle / abuse they may get
10 people pirating a copy themselves vs 10 people paying some guy to do it for them is not much different.
The illegal piracy needs to boom, until media companies realise why people want it: To watch a video, download a copy on their computer and watch it without a million techincal barriers.
Offer a Netflix where there are no ads (on paid plans LOL), and can actually download DRM-free video files to your computer. This will never happen because there is no profit in a business model like that, so therefore we refer to my earlier conclusion.
Well I think it's a personal stance, more of a country-specific law issue I only entertained doing this after they brag they are US-based, even take card via US-based business and my my knowledge these US companies would be upset.
Is it though? How do you know they don't have a licence or the copyright holder's permission? You are making a huge assumption. You're probably right, but it's not the provider's place to make that determination and do the investigation necessary.
For example, I previously had a subscription to Viki. There's a lot of copyrighted material on there, and there's also user submitted subtitles which makes it look suspect. I have every reason to believe that all their content is correctly licensed, but it's impossible for me to know as an external party if that is true or not.
If I go on Youtube, there's literally no end of content. You can find TV shows and film put on their by the copyright holders. You can also find channels where licensees have uploaded them. You can also find channels where it's almost certainly just random people with no rights to the content who have uploaded them. But as a user, there's no way for sure of knowing. Only the copyright holders can know for sure.
If the copyright holders are concerned, there's already a process to follow. They send a DMCA take down notice, it gets forwarded to the customer to delete the relevant content. The customer response is forwarded back to the complainant. If it's still violating, the copyright holder will demand the server is taken down, with the threat of court action if it's not. The provider will then comply.
Remember to tell them about your "friend" as well. He should get fined by same logic for buying piracy service access.
Totally understand the mindset here, and it's a big help truly again I didn't open this for a simple solution, I did it as i've never reported anything of such and now I know where to direct my time, it's appreciated truly.
Understand the perspective of this, but I don't think a elderly gentlemen who was pointed towards a service should be held to the same standards as those knowingly abusing copyright, and there own US-based laws to provide a service, and then on-top of it also scam them, I agree with many people in this thread, but this mentality I don't.
Yeah, I joined there just to post that and piss you off. Nobody likes snitches or white knights for billion dollar corpos, now imagine being both.
Totally fine to not like me or my stance friend, but if there wasn't money stolen, I wouldn't be here, from communities i'm apart of, scammers are worse than snitches.
Your entire situation is laughable. I once bought shady IPTV access for 10 usd, but it went down after a week. I ate my loss knowing what I signed up for, but your making a thread acting like a victim and telling how your gonna email disney about it. Grow up lmao
Yes. Whether prices for non-pirated content is fair is different question, but piracy is definitely wrong.
Aside from anything else, it's a basic principle of our society. Somebody makes something and wants to be paid for their work. If you think it's worth it, you pay and get to enjoy the work. If you don't think it's worth it, you keep your money and don't get to enjoy that work.
If the people involved in creating the work aren't paid enough, they will either:
But ultimately, piracy is depriving someone of their income. Maybe you can justify it to yourself as "it's a big corporation", but ultimately the less profit they make, the less willing they are to gamble on making future products.
Personally, I think that there are many actors, footballers, singers, etc who are paid way in excess of what is fair for their work, but I don't think that can be used as a justification for piracy. If anything, it shows that people in general do think the cost of seeing their favourite whatever is worth the asking price. Movie studios pay actors massive amounts because they know that will make the movie more popular, for example, and so more people will consider it to be worth paying the price of a cinema ticket or buying the DVD, and make it more likely that a streaming service / TV station will pay for broadcast rights.
I get that my approach here wasn’t ideal, and I’ve already acknowledged that. I’ll handle things differently going forward.
But let’s be consistent: you reported my thread to their Discord, which—by your own “snitch” standard—puts you in the same category you’re mocking. It goes both ways.
My intention wasn’t to white‑knight for corporations. It was to point out a service openly operating at scale, charging people, and scamming some of them on top of it. That kind of thing hurts the entire ecosystem in the long run. When these operations grow unchecked, the end result is higher prices and worse experiences for everyone else.
It’s the same logic as shoplifting: just because a big company can absorb the loss doesn’t mean the behavior doesn’t have consequences.
You don’t have to agree with my stance, but pretending only one side qualifies as “snitching” is just selective logic.
55 years old isn't elderly gentlemen, it's someone who lived with computers and internet since about 30 years of age, most of their productive life. Second point is, as long as there is demand for such services there will be also supply of them.
Mate, you are just wasting your time. None of your actions will have any impact. As long as you dont have several 100Ks USD and some years to waste, there is no way you will get your friends money back. Even if you contact Disney, Amazon and so on.
As harsh as it sounds, just accept the fact that your friends money is gone and you can do nothing about it.
Karma is a bitch, $200 for a life lesson aint that bad. Trusting those guys is like answering to an e-mail from the Nigerian Prince offering you money.
Thanks for the list of based providers.