Amazon's Fire TV platform has long been a favorite for pirated TV, with cheap sticks sold as "fully loaded", but that is now coming to an end, Amazon confirms.
The first signs of the shift emerged in June, but there was uncertainty about whether that was the complete picture.
Amazon now definitively confirms that it has started blocking all apps used for pirate TV, whether movies, series, sports or other content. The rollout begins in Germany and France and will expand worldwide "in the coming weeks and months".
- "Piracy is illegal and we’ve always worked to block it from our app store. We’ll now block apps identified as providing access to pirated content, including those downloaded from outside our app store. This builds on our ongoing efforts to support creators and protect customers, as piracy can also expose users to malware, viruses and fraud," Amazon told The Athletic.
Following heavy criticism
Pressure on Amazon has mounted in recent years, and in June 2025 an analysis firm Enders Analysis issued a scathing report of Amazon, Google and Microsoft. Fire TV was described as a "facilitator for piracy".
Fire TV is widely used for pirated TV around the world. Many of these apps are sideloaded, meaning that they are not installed via the official app store. Third parties sell cheap Fire TV sticks on social media as "fully loaded" with lots of illegal apps preinstalled.
In the UK, more than 30% of all pirate streams originate from a Fire TV device, according to The Athletic.
These "jailbroken" devices can also pose a security risk.
- "Once you connect an untrusted IPTV box to your home network, you should assume anything you type into it could be harvested—and that the device may try to observe other traffic on your network," Miguel Fornes, Cybersecurity expert at Surfshark, wrote in an email to FlatpanelsHD. "Many of these devices run heavily modified versions of Android with security controls stripped out so pirated apps can run. From a security perspective, that's a red flag."
VegaOS does not allow sideloading
TVs and media players with Fire TV have historically been built on the open version of Android (AOSP), but Amazon has begun transitioning Fire TV to its own VegaOS.
VegaOS no longer allows sideloading. However, the blocking of pirate apps applies regardless of whether a Fire TV device runs VegaOS or Android, Amazon emphasized.
This leaves Google TV as the only major TV platform that still allows pirate apps via sideloading. In August, Google announced plans to partially block sideloading, while the EU continues pressuring Apple to allow it.
In 2017, Amazon joined other Hollywood studios and tech companies in founding the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), which now has more than 50 members. In 2024 the industry group announced that it would intensify its anti-piracy efforts and start to block illegal services.
- Source: The Athletic
