ATDHE

ATDHE is a website specializing in streaming video of live sports events. It recently moved location following a controversial seizure of its domain name by US authorities.

ATDHE sports feeds cover a broad range of the most popular sports in the US and globally, including live games of football, baseball, basketball, hockey, soccer and other sports. These feeds are collected from many different original sources, including Justin.tv and Ustream.tv, but are carefully chosen by ATDHE editors to make sure that they work properly, are free, and actually feature coverage of the game expected. The selected feeds are shown to users in a short list of the day’s events, making ATDHE very easy to use. The stream quality available may often not be as good as various paid options offered online, but streams are usually watchable enough for sports fans who are unable to get to a TV and want to follow their teams online.

The ATDHE site is totally free to viewers, and is funded by advertising. According to the site’s terms of service, ATDHE does not directly host any of the content itself, but only collects together suitable feeds that are already available elsewhere on the net. Some of these feeds may be infringing copyright, but ATDHE asks rights holders to contact the sites hosting the material, and denies any responsibility for either the material it points to, or the actions of its users.

ATDHE does not give the names of any of the people involved in the organization. whether as founders, staff or editors, and the site does not provide any information on how to contact the organization other than an email address atdhenet(at)live.com.

Seizure of ATDHE domain by Homeland Security

On Feb 1st 2011, a number of sports streaming sites including ATDHE and Roja Directa had their domain names seized as part of an investigation by the US Department of Homeland Security. Since the websites are actually located outside the US, only the use of the domain name itself seems to have been affected.

Techdirt, a blog specialising in legal and policy issues affecting technology, commented that the seizures were carried out:

under the legally questionable theory that linking to infringing material is, by itself, criminal copyright infringement. I’ve yet to find any legal expert who seems to believe that the law actually says this anywhere.²

More information will be provided as it becomes available, but it seems that for now ATDHE has switched its operation to a new domain, ATDHEnet.tv.³

Another website, ATDHE.me, which also claims to be the continuation of ATDHE has a different user interface than ATDHE.net used to have, asks for additional plugins to be loaded, and features a different selection of sporting events than ATDHE typically offered. This suggests that it is not operated by the same team as the original ATDHE site, and may not be safe to use.

Users should exercise caution with any site that claims to be the new version of ATDHE, and especially beware of downloading anything, as this may turn out to be malware.

Due to the low profile kept by the original operators of the ATDHE site, it is not easy to verify whether any site claiming to be “the new ATDHE” is really run by the same people, or by others attempting to exploit its former users.

ATDHE Compatibility

ATDHE and iPhone / iPad

Like the majority of sites, ATDHE uses Flash technology for streaming its video content. Apple has taken a strong stance against Flash for various reasons, so ATDHE videos cannot be watched on iPhone or iPads.⁴

Some other sites have chosen to develop dedicated apps for Apple mobile devices or have provided device specific streams that use Apple supported standards, but this is unlikely to happen with ATDHE which presumably operates on a small budget and is dependent on compiling feeds from many independent sources.

Since ATDHE takes many of its feeds from Justin.tv, one option that is worth a try for watching live sports on iPhones and iPads is the free Justin.tv iPhone app. While this app has a low rating from users in iTunes, a recent update seems to have improved stability. Given the lack of other good options, you may want to at least try this free app and judge for yourself if it meets your needs.⁵

ATDHE and Internet Explorer

For some reason, ATDHE streams sometimes don’t seem to work properly in Internet Explorer (IE). If you have an up to date version of IE and Flash, and the ATDHE window for your chosen show appears but remains blank it’s worth tryng it in a different browser such as Firefox, Chrome or Safari.

Is ATDHE Safe?

The following comments apply to the original ATDHE.net site, and much more caution should be used with any of the apparent successor sites.

According to both long-times users and Google’s Safe Browsing diagnostics, ATDHE.net was safe to use, and did not contain any malware. The site did not require anything to be downloaded to your computer, and worked by using the Flash plug-in within your browser, the same as the vast majority of video streaming sites on the Internet.⁶⁷

The ATDHEnet.tv site appears to be the same, but it may advisable to be extra careful when using it, and be especially suspicious of any downloads that are asked for.

On the original ATDHE there were some circumstances where you might have seen a message displayed about using software called UltraSurf. Most users won’t need this. However if you do, make sure you are downloading and using the authentic UltraSurf, which is software that was designed to protect the privacy and safety of internet users, especially in countries that have censorship and dictatorial regimes.⁸

Is ATDHE legal?

People are sometimes concerned about whether it is legal to watch ATDHE. As far as can be determined it is perfectly legal for viewers to watch ATDHE streams. As explained above, ATDHE compiles video streams from many sources, and if any of those sources are found to be infringing copyright, the copyright owners can have the streams taken down from the sites where they are hosted using US DMCA laws and their equivalents in other countries.⁹

The legality of ATDHE itself is somewhat more debatable, as there are some legal precedents for sites that only link to copyright violating material being found guilty of being accessories to the breach of copyright, when this is being done on a large scale and for commercial gain. However there have equally been cases where such sites have been vindicated in court cases. Legality may therefore vary from jurisdiction to jurisdiction and depend on the exact details of each case and the precise method of operation of a website.¹⁰¹¹

However there seems to be little legal risk to individual users of ATDHE, regardless of any issues which may arise for the site itself.

ATDHE Live TV

Although ATDHE is known for live sports, it also provides a range of TV channels. ATDHE live TV channels currently include general channels like ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox, children’s channels such as Disney Channel and Nickelodeon, a variety of news channels, a couple of movie channels, and channels in several other categories such as Syfy and Planet Earth.

These channels are provided in the same way as ATDHE live sports content, by compiling free online streams from around the net, and often come from sites such as BoxLive.tv.

You can find the full list of available live channels at ATDHE Watch TV.

Who uses ATDHE?

According to data from Alexa.com, the ATDHE site is rather more popular with males than females, and people in 18-24 year old age group use this site far more than others. Alexa estimates that users are a little more likely than average to have a college education.

ATDHE has an exceptionally diverse global audience with only 23% of visitors coming from the US, another 8-9% coming from Germany, and the rest of the viewers spread between many different countries around the world.¹²

ATDHE Alternatives

Other websites which often stream live sports events for free include Justin.tv and UStream, which ATDHE often selects its feed from. MyPremium.tv is another such service, and despite its name is also free.

Some people prefer Sopcast to ATDHE. However Sopcast is not simply a website, but a peer-to-peer technology, which uses your computer and bandwidth to share streams with other users, as well as delivering video to you.¹³

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