[octalmage]

They're ripping from sites that are ad supported. So the site doesn't get the ad impressions, and the plugin developer could (if they put ads in the plugins). Site operators hate it, and are constantly blocking them.

Basically, they reach out to about 80 sites and scrape for links, then resolve those. It's a pretty insane process, but they've got it working just well enough.

[dvfjsdhgfv]

Wouldn't a simple "log in to see the links" approach solve this problem?

[nickysielicki]

Better to make some money from the people watching your streams on a computer without an adblocker, than it is to hide the stream and have people hit their back button and find one of the dozens of other sites.

The cost to run one of those sites is being overestimated here. They don't actually serve any of the video streams, just embedding from the dozens and dozens of little-known free live streaming services.

[octalmage]

But, those little known free streaming services are also losing money here. It's those sites that are really losing.

[Spivak]

Any site that tried this would be replaced immediately by another that didn't.