Sdarot

Not to be confused with Sderot.

Sdarot (Hebrew: סדרות, lit. 'Series') was an Israeli piracy-based streaming media website that streamed content from Israel and from across the world. As of March 2022, Sdarot was the biggest online streaming website in Israel, with over 1.3 billion views across all its content.^[1]

Sdarot / סדרות

Type of site	Online streaming media website
Available in	Hebrew
Dissolved	December 2023
Country of origin	Israel
Area served	Worldwide
Revenue	Purchase option inside the website
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Required
Users	863,009 ^[citation needed]
Launched	January 2011
Current status	Defunct
Content license	Unlicensed

History

The site was established in January 2011^[1] and began to provide pirated content with built-in Hebrew subtitles, with their goal being "making TV series accessible for all the population, without the need to pay huge amounts of money to TV corporations".^[1]

During the years of its operation, the site changed its address several times following their battle against the copyright infringement "Zira". The site's has an application too that bypasses DNS blocking with a built-in VPN.

On 11 March 2021, The site fell due to a fire that broke out at a server farm in France where some of the company's servers were stored.^[2] The site was back online after two days.

At the end of 2021, according to the site's statistics, the site crossed one billion views across all its content.

Sratim

Sratim (Hebrew: סרטים, lit. 'Movies') is the sister site to Sdarot, it publishes unlicensed movies rather than TV shows.^{[citation needed]} The movies on the site have user-generated Hebrew subtitles super-imposed on them, like on Sdarot.^{[citation needed]}

Website activity

The site allows people to view its content from multiple servers, but there is also a purchase option that allows people to watch the series without from a special server without waiting 30 seconds. The site also had a forum that was closed in 2020. The site is operated by 100 volunteers.^[3]

Legal battle

Various organizations, including Zira, had been trying to close the website due to copyright infringement for years.^[4] In 2016, a blocking order was issued, and Internet providers began blocking access to the site's domain.^[5] However, despite the order, the site continued to operate on new or different domains,^[6] and most people in Israel accessed the site by changing their DNS to 1.1.1.1 or by VPN. In January 2017, Facebook blocked the page of the site which had 77,000 followers,^[7] and on 17 February 2022, their Instagram and Telegram pages were blocked as well.^[1]

Another closure order was issued again in January 2020, and Israeli ISPs blocked access to the site's domain at the DNS level again. As of January 2020, a lawsuit is being filed against the site.

In May 2022, the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York ruled that Sdarot TV and two other websites were providing illegal service, and ordered US ISPs to block access to them.^[8]

References

1. "Sdarot.TV | סדרות - צפייה ישירה והורדה עם תרגום מובנה". sdarot.tv. Retrieved 11 February 2023.
2. ynet (11 March 2021). "אתר "סדרות" נפל לאחר ששריפה פרצה בשרתיו בצרפת". Ynet (in Hebrew). Retrieved 12 March 2022.
3. "אתר sdarot נחשף, ריאיון עם הבעלים: "זיר"ה לא יגיעו אלינו"". Ice (in Hebrew). Retrieved 12 March 2022.
4. "אז מדוע חוק סינון אתרים לא יעיל?". Israel Hayom.
5. בוחבוט, הגר (13 December 2016). "סוף השידורים? צו חסימה לאתר התוכן הפיראטי "סדרות"". Ynet (in Hebrew). Retrieved 12 March 2022.
6. ""החוק הישראלי אינו תקף לגבינו": סדרות - אתר הצפייה הישירה הגדול במדינה - לא מוותר". TheMarker. Retrieved 12 March 2022.
7. "פייסבוק ישראל השביתה את עמוד הפייסבוק של אתר סדרות". מזבלה (in Hebrew). 5 January 2017. Retrieved 12 March 2022.
8. Brown, Hannah (3 May 2022). "Israeli artists win as US court rules against 'pirates'". Jerusalem Post. Retrieved 5 May 2022.