The internet's biggest TV pirate calls it quits after scam

If you enjoy getting the latest TV shows from EZTV, you may want to stop that now, and not just because it's illegal. It's also more risky, because the hugely popular torrent site is now in the hands of potentially bad actors, according to TorrentFreak. Former staffers said that EZTV's founder "NovaKing" was the victim of a hostile takeover by a for-profit group, following a series of wacky (and ironic) events. The problems started when Italy's .IT registry suspended the original site's domain name, and what followed was something out of a high-tech Kafka novel.

First, the "EZTV.it" domain was gobbled up for "five figures" by a third party, using the same company name (EZCloud) under which NovaKing had originally registered EZTV. That party then proceeded to strip all references to the original site, which had relocated to the .CH domain in the meantime -- while the new owners tried to get the original site to play along. Using a fake name, faux-EZTV managed to seize the original .SE domain held by the EuroDNS registrar, despite NovaKing's attempt to block the move. From there, the rogue "EZCloud" was able to reset various EZTV services and passwords and take control of every domain, eventually including EZTV.ch.

If this site tells you not to go to somewhere, we'd listen
Though EZTV's servers apparently weren't compromised, a staffer said NovaKing was distraught by the attack and decided to walk away from his "non-profit" labor of love. The purloined EZTV sites continue to operate using new, non-EZTV torrents (complete with ads and pop-unders) while the operators claim that all is still well. However, other torrent sites like Pirate Bay and KickAss torrents have severed ties, and TPB is even warning users to "stay away" from EZTV.ch. And if a site where you go to get "internet herpes," (as my colleague put it), tells you to stay away, we'd advise you to listen. After all, there are plenty of similar sites and of course, lots of legal options.