Amazon has started aggressively blocking apps that facilitate or enable piracy on its Fire TV streaming sticks.

The tech giant curbing piracy on its streaming devices has been rumored for several months now, but apart from the launch of the Fire TV 4K Stick Select and Vega OS and a warning that didn't actually block anything, this is the first real example of the shift on a Fire OS-powered Fire Stick. The crackdown features a fullscreen pop-up that appears when you open the app with a simple warning, encouraging users to uninstall or dismiss the notification, as first reported by AFTVNews.

If you choose to dismiss the "unlicensed content" notification, the app doesn't launch. The warning is very similar to Google Chrome's familiar notification about navigating to insecure websites, only unlike previous versions of the Fire TV Stick anti-piracy pop-up, Amazon has taken things a step further and there's no way to actually open the app anymore. In the past, this pop-up still allowed users to launch the app anyway, alongside the option to "Uninstall" it.

Amazon first announced plans to start cracking down on piracy apps back in October.

As of right now, there's no simple way to launch blocked apps

It's unclear how many apps are part of the crackdown

There's currently no simple workaround to launch blocked apps, but as AFTVNews mentions, the block is directly related to the app's name. So, in theory, if you altered its package name, it would open, which is something some piracy-focused apps are already reportedly doing. Along with the piracy crackdown, Amazon has also removed a popular cloning tool from the Fire TV app store that allowed users to easily rename and duplicate blocked apps directly on the streaming sticks.

At least right now, well-known self-hosting media apps like Plex, Kodi, and Jellyfin, which can be used to stream copyrighted material, are not included in Amazon's anti-piracy crackdown.

As is often the case, it's likely a more straightforward workaround for the popup will appear soon, and I expect that once it does, Amazon will more than likely swiftly block it. A notable reason why Fire TV devices are so popular is how versatile their Android-powered Fire OS operating system is. If Amazon continues to lockdown its streaming sticks, I can see at least some core users jumping to other, less restrictive streaming devices.