Accurately predicting how, when and where the next wave of pirate sites will emerge to become the next big threat is much easier said than done.

At any point, one of several moving parts could rule a country out for a few years, or propel it straight into pole position. From rapid development of internet infrastructure to a new generation blessed with the right skills, joining the workplace at just the right time, anything is possible in the shifting sands of piracy.

The MPA accurately predicted the chances of Vietnam becoming an online piracy hotbed many years ago. Yet despite every conceivable effort, progress to disrupt sites like Fmovies and Aniwatch (formerly Zoro.to) which enjoy close to a quarter billion visits every month, progress has been slow when compared to efforts in other regions.

The current state of play features Vietnam as the home of some of the world’s most popular pirate sites, together servicing at least two billion visits each month, but potentially many more.

What Can Be Done About the Worst of the Worst?

Following a September report highlighting piracy of live sports in Vietnam , last weekend the Ministry of Information and Communications held a workshop where stakeholders discussed matters related to pirate sites.

Inevitably, notorious sports streaming sites operating under the ‘Xoi Lac’ banner received several mentions due to unusual resilience and overall share of the ‘pirate’ market. Xoi Lac has evaded every disruption measure deployed over the past five years while attracting the wrong kind of attention from rightsholders thousands of miles away.

In a recent report to the USTR, the Premier League said that it considers Xoi Lac one of the worst platforms it has ever seen.

[The Xoilac websites] are some of the most egregious the Premier League has encountered, with infringement continuing on the site despite Vietnamese authorities attempting to block access to domains associated with the service, and widespread news coverage highlighting that the sites are infringing. In total, the operators have created over 300 domains within the Xoilac family to try and avoid disruption efforts.

Pirate sites can benefit from the publicity that goes hand-in-hand with this kind of attention; as The Pirate Bay said on many occasions: “This will just give us more traffic, as always. Thanks for the free advertising.”

Becoming a household name is a considerable milestone for any website. Unfortunately, the millstones of infamy are less beneficial, harder to shake, and for those in power, an obvious potential target. When other crimes enter the mix, anything can happen.

“They Are Associated With Organized Crime”

The Premier League’s USTR submission states that Xoi Lac’s operators appear to be based in the capital, but the follow-up comment is potentially more interesting. Major overseas rightsholders claim to know the identities of the people behind several Vietnam-based sites, yet many continue to operate with apparent impunity.

“The operators of the site appear to be based in Hanoi, Vietnam and seemingly operate with little concern for enforcement action being taken against them,” the submission notes.

While that’s a major concern for rightsholders, comments made during the workshop may signal changes ahead.

“The issue of copyright infringement is associated with organized crime. For example, the Xoi Lac channel is not simply a form of live-streaming online; it is also associated with online fraud, online gambling, and loan sharking for football betting,” said Nguyen Thanh Lam, Vietnam’s Deputy Minister of Information and Communications.

Comments like these are uncommon, especially when accompanied by a commitment to fight piracy.

Ministries Combine to Form Specialized Unit

Lam told the workshop that the Ministry of Information and Communications, the Ministry of Culture, Sports and Tourism, and the Ministry of Public Security, will establish a specialized unit to tackle copyright issues.

The Minister also highlighted the need to educate the public on why they should avoid pirate sites. That raises interesting questions in itself.

Aside from the popular state-run lottery, gambling is heavily restricted in Vietnam and those caught facilitating illegal gambling can end up in prison. Loan shark-style money lending is also illegal and an aggravating factor in illegal gambling prosecutions. Those who simply participate in illegal gambling face punishment if caught, yet even that hasn’t proven much of a deterrent.

On the assumption that the Minister’s claims about Xoi Lac are true, yet people still flood to the site, it seems likely that some are borrowing money from loan sharks to participate in illegal gambling. There are few scenarios in any country where that ends well for the in-debt gambler, people know it, yet still aren’t deterred.

That raises the question of what type of messaging could possibly deter people from watching pirated football streams, when anti-gambling measures have so obviously failed. A local report suggests that messaging may receive support from the police.

“In the near future, the Ministry of Information and Communications will have a plan to discuss with the police force to launch a peak attack and suppress crime in this field,” the report concludes.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

When Hollywood sets its sights on something it wants to achieve in the piracy landscape, victory may not come this week or even next year. The MPA has been around for 100 years; it definitely has patience to see out a few more.

In Vietnam, despite changes in the law and visits by high-ranking MPA and ACE representatives, patience will be required to reduce piracy. The world’s largest pirate sites seem to operate freely there and even when giants like Zoro.to and 9anime came under direct pressure from ACE recently, immediate respawning under new domains was hardly conducive to confidence building.

MPA/ACE have enjoyed success, the closure of 2embed is just one example. But with Vietnam-based movie streaming giant Fmovies also announcing a domain switch/minor rebranding to Fmoviesz recently, more progress is needed and in an announcement this week, the authorities reported just that.

1,000 Piracy Websites Blocked

During an anti-piracy seminar held in Hanoi on Tuesday, data compiled by the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information, a department under the Ministry of Information and Communications revealed that, during the past 12 months, 1,000 copyright-infringing sites were blocked in Vietnam.

The blocking reportedly took place between August 2022 and August 2023, but there’s not much for the MPA to celebrate, at least not in the short term.

It appears that most of the targets were sites offering pirate football streams, not the platforms offering movies, TV shows, manga, and anime that the MPA would like to shut down. Reading between the lines, these blocking efforts are considered a step in the right direction but were probably ineffective overall.

Blocking is 98% Successful Until it Immediately Isn’t

A representative of the state-run Vietnam Digital Copyright Center said that blocking of the 1,000 sites (a closer view reveals that’s actually the number of domains) was carried out in coordination with Vietnamese internet service providers. A similar approach last year allegedly reduced visits to pirate streaming sites by 98%, but general commentary on the scheme tends to undermine that.

Current blocking efforts are described as inconsistent, with some ISPs quickly blocking sites but others taking a much more leisurely approach. Given that sites reportedly switch to new domains in a claimed five to 10 minutes, blocking faces immediate challenges. A football streaming site known as ‘Xoi Lac TV’ is claimed to be the most notorious repeat offender and by ignoring bans and switching domains, it has remained online for around five years.

Pirate Sites Funded By Illegal Advertising

Media reports from 2018 indicate that Xoi Lac TV and many other sites were blocked on copyright grounds. And when 500 sites were reportedly blocked in 2021/22, copyright was again the headline reason.

Indeed, Vietnam already has a site-blocking mechanism in place; a verified complaint from a rightsholder can lead to the Authority of Broadcasting and Electronic Information (AEBI) instructing an online platform to remove content. If that doesn’t happen within the allocated timeframe, ISPs can be instructed to block the sites. Why that doesn’t happen to more sites more often isn’t clear, but there are other ways pirate sites can find themselves in more immediate trouble.

When football streaming sites are blocked in Vietnam, discussion of illegal betting advertising on the platforms usually appears as part of the discussion. Xoi Lac TV has appeared on lists of domains blocked due to illegal gambling promotions and the government seems very willing to bring those involved to justice .

Late 2022 an expert with Vietnam’s National Cyber Security Center said that the operators of local streaming sites obtain foreign streams, embed their own logos, and then use the content to promote gambling and fraud.

“The general method of these websites is to steal TV copyrights, ‘push’ the search engine optimization (SEO) to the top on Google to attract traffic, and then receive ads for gambling and fraud channels,” the expert said .

Xoi Lac TV streams reportedly promote the gambling game portal Zovip and sports betting sites including 1bet88 and fun88.

Vietnam Faces “Overseas Challenges”

This type of gambling-focused business model is largely absent from the large sites the MPA would like Vietnam to shut down. Whether that helps them to survive is up for debate but based on comments before and during the event on Tuesday, Vietnam isn’t averse to highlighting enforcement difficulties it faces in ‘other’ countries.

Xoi Lac TV is reportedly among around 70 football piracy sites that together generated around 1.5 billion views in 2022/23. However, figures cited by authorities in Vietnam claim that 200 local pirate movie sites only attract 120 million visits per month overall. Fmovies – now known as Fmoviesz – receives around 119.5 million visits each month in its own right.

Traffic estimates aside, Pham Hoang Hai, Director of the Digital Content Copyright Center, notes that all of these sites have something in common; they use foreign domain names and services to hide their identities. It was previously highlighted that when Xoi Lac TV operated from Xoilac.tv, it was difficult to trace its operator due to the domain’s registration in the United States. That wasn’t made any easier by the site allegedly using a U.S. IP address and U.S. hosting.

Blocking or shutting down websites isn’t something to be taken lightly and it appears Vietnam will take its time before deciding how to proceed against the largest pirate platforms. Meanwhile, it’s being reported that the government has been drafting new rules that will compel ISPs to kick citizens off the internet if they share “law-breaking information.”

“The move threatens to throttle web access further in a country where an estimated 1,000 websites, from those of the BBC to Freedom House, are already blocked,” Nikkei reports .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The recent release of The Pirates vs The Premier League podcast series was a great opportunity to hear fresh voices and opinions on the Premier League’s piracy problems.

The Premier League has had piracy issues since its inception, although fundamentally no different to those endured by its broadcasting partners years before the Premier League even existed.

The podcast provided a platform where fans, experts, and other interested parties, were able to present their opinions on what motivates people to consume pirated streams to the detriment of the Premier League. There was even a slim chance that discussions would lead to solutions or at least some common ground.

Premier League Disinterested in Discussion

While there were no fresh surprises, the causes of piracy in the UK were certainly underlined; expensive subscriptions spread over multiple platforms, and zero access to 3pm games. The pirate counter-offer: cheap subscriptions with zero restrictions.

Somewhere between those disparate poles lies opportunity and the non-preachy nature of the podcast seemed as good a place as any to discuss or even tiptoe round the edges of a discussion involving the Premier League.

Unfortunately, the Premier League declined to appear; presumably because it’s their multi-billion pound business, and they’ll run it as they see fit, within the confines of the official 375-page 2023-2024 handbook ( pdf ) .

With the Premier League apparently in no mood for discussion right now, it came as a surprise to see the name of its general counsel appear in news feeds as the UK enjoyed a Bank Holiday yesterday.

Deterrent Messaging – Paywalled

In an article published in the Financial Times, it was made abundantly clear that the Premier League’s attitude towards piracy (and how it can be reduced) has not changed. Premier League general counsel Kevin Plumb was extremely clear; piracy will meet the world’s richest football competition in the legal arena.

The Premier League’s status as an iconic and powerful global business dovetails perfectly with the reporting of the prestigious Financial Times. However, the article’s emphasis on deterrent anti-piracy messaging was published behind a paywall. Whether that was intentionally symbolic is unclear but football fans aren’t the only audience the Premier League has to consider.

The piece begins by noting that the Premier League will take a tougher stance against illegal streaming after beefing up its legal team and launching private prosecutions. More importantly, perhaps, this is all taking place as the Premier League prepares for a “multibillion auction of domestic television rights.” Given that being pummeled by pirates is imagery unlikely to increase bids, a zero-tolerance announcement to the business world makes a lot of sense.

“We don’t underestimate them. They’re really sophisticated now. There is always a challenge with finding people online,” Plumb told the FT.

“When I first started doing this, our top line priority would have been pubs. There’s a little bit of that now but piracy has evolved from peer-to-peer streaming to closed network subscriptions. You went from the pub to the teenagers in their bedrooms to families watching in their living room, and that then becomes a real priority for us,” he said.

Flawless Deterrent

The most significant deterrent message ever sent by the Premier League is still relatively fresh. In May, five men behind pirate IPTV service Flawless TV were sentenced to more than 30 years in prison , the end result of a private prosecution brought by the Premier League with significant support from Trading Standards and the police.

“Would you want to carry on this sort of business if you’re going to get 10 or 11 years in jail?” Plumb asked, referencing the sentence handed down to Flawless ringleader, Mark Gould.

Of course, the logical answer is no. The reality is that buying an illegal IPTV package is easier than ever and nothing changed when the sentences were handed down almost three months ago.

The Premier League understands its business better than anyone but history has shown that force alone cannot beat piracy. The Premier League is undoubtedly special but certainly not immune to having its deterrent threats ignored, even those not published behind a paywall.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

For a country that regularly claims to be at war with the United States, Russian lawmakers appear to have plenty of time to discuss how its citizens will continue to be entertained by mostly U.S. content.

Over the last 18 months, various ideas and proposals have leaned toward limiting or even nullifying Western entertainment companies’ intellectual property rights in response to their withdrawal from the Russian market. Until more recently, these obviously damaging proposals were met with relatively mild cautionary language, even from traditionally vocal anti-piracy groups.

Whether the response to a bill submitted to the State Duma earlier this year represents changing times is unclear, but Russian rightsholders now insist that allowing everyone to pirate Western content will end up damaging business in Russia.

Federal Law No. 46-FZ

The bill submitted in April seeks amendments to the provisions of Federal Law No. 46-FZ of March 8, 2022.

In respect of intellectual property, the law currently references the application of the “international principle” of exhaustion of rights. Using content that has been legally put into circulation in any other country of the world is not an infringement of exclusive rights, the law continues, adding that parallel importation of goods can be carried out without authorization from the rightsholder.

“This tool is used by most states in the world to prevent anti-competitive practices and abuses of market position by right holders,” the text concludes ( pdf ) .

Bill Demands More Than Parallel Imports

When Western companies decided to stop doing business with Russia in response to its invasion of Ukraine, that amounted to an abuse of their position, Russia argues. As a result, Russia no longer feels bound by licensing restrictions and will source the same content from elsewhere, whenever that’s required.

The bill submitted in April seeks significant amendments to Law No. 46-FZ that would allow Western content with exclusive foreign rights to be translated, reproduced/copied and publicly distributed with zero permission needed from the rightsholders.

The only remotely positive aspect is that any use of those works would need to be reported to a Russian collection society with the authority to calculate how much is owed, collect the funds, and then distribute an unknown percentage of those funds to rightsholders. By allowing the ‘buyer’ of content to set the terms and conditions of sale and eliminating negotiations on price, the proposal turns business norms upside down.

TV Giants and Legal Streaming Platforms Unite

Opposition to the bill inside Russia now has the support of TV companies and legal streaming platforms. A letter sent by the powerful industry group Media Communications Union, which represents the rights of companies including Gazprom Media, Channel One, and Rostelecom, informed the head of the State Duma Committee on Economic Policy of their concerns.

As reported by Kommersant , the letter warns that the widespread use of copyrighted works without proper authorization “violates the interests of specialized market participants” and may lead to the “termination of their activities.”

“It also creates the risk of using this mechanism to legalize and popularize pirated resources, which will negatively affect domestic producers and owners of exclusive rights to content,” the letter adds.

Other Options, All Bad

Other proposals reported recently include Russia unblocking previously blocked pirate sites, providing they don’t offer content shown legally by local online streaming platforms or available to view in cinemas.

Amendments to the Civil Code adopted in the first reading by the State Duma last month would allow multiple violations of multiple rightsholders’ rights to be considered as one violation, if they were committed all at once or over a short period of time, using one or multiple methods. Local rightsholders are reportedly unhappy with the plan, according to a Kommersant source.

“The concept of a single infringement will greatly simplify the lives of pirates,” the source said . “For example, a pirate has made a website and posted a thousand films, books and music from different rights holders. There is a single economic goal here – to make money from advertising on the site.”

There are also fears that the amendments could lead to minimal damages awards of just 100,000 rubles ($1,100)

Media Communications Union Makes Suggestions

The members of the Media Communications Union have some proposals relating to Western content. It appears that while everyone pirating is a bad idea, more limited use centered around a limited number of companies may be acceptable.

In broad terms, the industry group believes that Russian companies that previously concluded licensing agreements with foreign copyright holders should be given the right to decide whether that content is made available or not.

“That is, as long as the film is on at least one platform, it is forbidden to ‘pirate’ it,” the insider clarified.

The media companies also propose that access to Western content should not be universal; companies that had licensing agreements in force on February 224, 2002, should receive priority consideration.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Many pirate sites have attracted large volumes of traffic over the years but a relatively new breed of streaming portals have taken things to a whole new level.

Excellent traffic levels a few years ago were measured in tens of millions of visits per month, but when Soap2Day suddenly threw in the towel around June 12/13, the site was receiving at least 108 million visits. Given that traffic levels were trending up and the site had no obvious technical issues, a zero-notice termination of a hugely successful platform prompts a single question: why now?

Legal Action in Canada

Dozens of reasons lie behind the closure of hundreds of sites over the years, but it’s extremely rare for highly successful sites to throw in the towel for minor reasons. A catastrophic team issue was a possible explanation when Soap2Day shut itself down, but the safer money was always on legal problems.

We can’t confirm the reasons from a direct source, but the following facts appear to leave very little doubt that Soap2Day shut down under massive legal pressure.

On May 31, 2023, major entertainment companies Bell Media, Netflix, Disney, Columbia, Universal, Warner, and Paramount, plus Get Er Done Productions and Spinner Productions, launched legal action at the Federal Court in Canada. The named parties were Soap2Day and a presumed operator of the platform listed only as ‘John Doe’.

The plaintiffs immediately sought an interim confidentiality order and on June 7, the Court obliged. The studios requested an interlocutory injunction pursuant to section 44 of the Federal Court Act and Rule 373 of the Federal Court Rules; the latter allows the Court to issue an injunction where there is a strong case to support copyright infringement and the plaintiffs face irreparable harm.

In short, the Court ordered the site to shut down and that’s exactly what it did.

Plaintiffs Seek Norwich Order

In Canada and the United Kingdom, the Norwich Pharmacal Order is often the discovery weapon of choice in cases involving online copyright infringement. First acquired in a case back in 1973/74 , Norwich orders allow plaintiffs to obtain information regarding infringements from parties who may not themselves be involved in the alleged infringement. In this case, two service providers.

Court documents reveal that on June 12, 2023, Exclusive Technologies Inc. (doing business as domain registrar Register.to) was served with the statement of claim, letters from the plaintiffs, a confidential version of the plaintiffs’ motion, and a court order. OVH Hosting Inc. was served on the same day.

Soap2Day operated a .to domain and was known to utilize OVH servers. The Norwich order, which hasn’t been made public, will require the companies to hand over any information held on Soap2Day and its operator(s).

Shutdown Coincided With Operator(s) Being Served

Along with the site’s domain registrar and hosting company, Soap2Day’s ‘John Doe’ was served with various documents and a court order on June 12, via email.

The image below shows how Soap2Day’s landing page appeared on June 11, the day before Soap2Day was served.

This second image shows the site’s appearance on June 13, the day after ‘John Doe’ was electronically served and ordered to shut down the streaming platform.

How the case will progress from here is unknown. Whether Soap2Day’s operators have any direct connections to Canada other than retaining a domain with Register.to and server hosting with OVH is unclear.

A Zoom conference is scheduled for Tuesday and the defendants were instructed to file their response by June 29, but that doesn’t appear to have happened.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The World Cup only takes place every four years so when the opportunity to see the world’s best players arrived again last year, an estimated 1.5 billion eventually tuned in to see the elite square off in the final.

Millions cheered on the French national team as the defending champions pursued glory against Argentina. After the French lost in a dramatic penalty shoot-out, for some it became a tournament to forget. For French telecoms regulator Arcom, the end of the competition signaled the start of research to determine how citizens consumed World Cup 2022 and how France benefited from it financially.

World Cup 2022 – Audiovisual Broadcasting Review

Published this week, Arcom’s study reveals that more than six out of 10 French people watched or listened to at least one live match during the World Cup, a figure that rose to 73% in respect of all content, including replays, match analysis, and behind-the-scenes reporting.

Of those who watched live matches, 90% did so from home, with television the medium of choice for 96% of respondents. Around one in five football fans watched at least one match on a smartphone, with 14% and 7% viewing on computers and tablets, respectively.

Most Fans Watched Matches for Free

Football is traditionally seen as a sport of the people, with national teams serving their countries and citizens rather than their usual corporate paymasters. For these and similar reasons, some countries have laws or regulations in place that prevent the whole of the World Cup from being locked away behind TV subscription packages.

In France, all matches played by the national team must be broadcast on a widely accessible system, at no charge to the public. The same applies to the opening match, semi-finals, and the final, regardless of which teams are playing.

Free TV broadcaster TF1 won the rights to air these games in 2022 and, as a result, 87% of those who watched live World Cup matches did so on TF1, legally and for free.

Paywalls Guarantee Piracy

Of the 64 matches played in the tournament, 36 matches were broadcast exclusively by beIN Sports. Since users of beIN must have a subscription, piracy of World Cup matches was effectively guaranteed when more than half the matches in the tournament were placed behind a paywall.

According to the study, 18% of live match consumers said they’d watched matches using a paid service. Of all live match consumers, 8% reported watching games using illegal platforms, with 5% using live sports streaming platforms or pirate IPTV applications, and 4% using social media, a figure roughly on par with illicit consumption during the rest of the year.

The conundrum for Arcom is that if it decided to crack down on the most prolific football pirates by demographic, it would also be cracking down on the fans most likely to spend money on legal content.

“The 15-34 age group, the leading group of illegal users (12%), are also the most inclined to use a pay option (26%),” Arcom reports.

Numerous studies have drawn similar conclusions over the years after finding links between the most engaged consumers and their consumption of content from both legal and illegal sources. A report from the EU last week found that 60% of pirates also buy content legally.

Paywalls = Profit

In the short term, the answer may lie in site-blocking measures. During the World Cup alone, France ordered the blocking of 83 domains in connection with football piracy.

Arcom hasn’t indicated if that had any effect on piracy levels but a small observation might be that if half the games weren’t behind a paywall, site blocking wouldn’t even be necessary. The flip side is that 15% of people who watched live matches took out paid subscriptions to do so and beIN Sports did very nicely out of that.

“Entirely dedicated to the 2022 World Cup, with daily coverage from 10 a.m. to midnight and all matches broadcast live, beIN Sports 1 benefited strongly from the competition from an advertising point of view. Total gross daily investment for the channel on match broadcast days amounted to around 16.1 million euros,” Arcom reports.

Arcom’s report can be found here ( 1 , 2 , pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

With pirate IPTV services first seeping and then exploding into the mainstream around 2016/17, the launch of streaming service DAZN provided hope of a viable alternative.

Initially made available in Germany, Switzerland, Austria and Japan, DAZN’s mission to provide affordable access to live and on-demand sports content was exactly what fans had been crying out for. Having grown tired of waiting, millions had already switched to pirate IPTV services but with a new approach, fresh-faced DAZN might even begin to win some back.

We are basically saying pay-per-view sucks

In December 2018, with Mexico’s Canelo Álvarez set to take on Britain’s Rocky Fielding the very next day, the Evening Standard interviewed DAZN’s then-CEO, Simon Denyer. After securing an eight-year boxing rights deal worth $1 billion, the plan was to ditch expensive one-off payments for big events in favor of steady, $10-per-month subscription packages.

“We are basically saying pay-per-view sucks,” Denyer said .

DAZN’s marketing drilled that message home – and then some.

Even those with a fundamental understanding of the boxing business could’ve predicted how this was likely to pan out.

The world’s best fighters live for big paydays, specifically the multi-multi-multi million dollar kind that are typically sustained by a solid PPV model. So, after onboarding subscribers on a PPV-sucks basis, DAZN told its customers that big fights would be available on the DAZN platform, on a PPV basis.

With other market forces already biting hard, DAZN followed up with a recent announcement heralding huge price increases for its regular subscription packages.

In the wake of almost doubling standard subscription rates in the United States and other key markets, DAZN will have to work hard to win new subscribers. Retaining the 20 million customers it already has will be a challenge too, but one that can be made easier by eliminating cheaper competitors operating in the same market.

DAZN Joins Rivals to Fight Piracy

Having lost more than $6 billion since launch in 2016, with an operational loss of $1.3 billion in 2021 alone, DAZN’s affordable content strategy appears to have issues. In 2021 it acquired soccer match rights in Italy and Germany, but since they are incredibly expensive, that meant doubling the price of subscriptions in those countries.

In a move to ensure that customers have no cheaper options, this week global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment announced that DAZN had become its latest member. Along with dozens of other corporations facing similar issues, DAZN will help to disrupt pirate streaming services all over the world.

“Intellectual property theft of live sports content is an industry issue, negatively impacting all sports and sports fans, and it needs a global concerted effort to meaningfully tackle it. ACE is the natural home for the Sports Piracy Task Force, given their track record, reputation, and experience in delivering effective programs of action,” says Shay Segev, DAZN Group CEO.

ACE Sports Piracy Task Force

Launched this week, the ACE Sports Piracy Task Force currently consists of beIN Media Group and DAZN, but the plan longer term is to bring other sports rightsholders on board to tackle what is increasingly viewed as a global threat.

“With every new member, our global network becomes more powerful and more effective at targeting and shutting down the piracy operators that threaten the media, entertainment and live sports economy and consumers,” says Jan van Voorn, Head of ACE and Executive Vice President and Chief of Global Content Protection at the MPA.

DAZN Chief Operations Officer Ed McCarthy describes the move as good for broadcasters and fans alike.

“Working with ACE, beIN, and other broadcasters and rights holders, the task force will pursue the criminal operators who are damaging sport at all levels, often using fans’ credit cards and data [for] illegal purposes. DAZN stands with ACE in the fight to eradicate the global theft of content,” McCarthy says.

Sports Rights Cost Billions

For perspective on what helps to drive up subscription prices and provide oxygen to illegal IPTV providers, the cost of broadcasting licenses is informative.

In 2021, DAZN won the rights to screen live Serie A soccer matches in Italy for three seasons. That deal will cost the company $2.7 billion. In the same year, DAZN and Movistar won the rights to broadcast Spanish soccer matches for five seasons. According to LaLiga, that deal is worth 4.9 billion euros ($5.37 billion).

A deal in the UK to screen Premier League matches is split unevenly between Sky, BT and Amazon. It covers just two seasons (2023/24 and 2024/25) and is believed to be worth in the region of £5.1 billion ($6.4 billion).

DAZN chief executive Shay Segev recently told The Times that obtaining Premier League rights is a priority for the company. Counterintuitively, a successful bid could also fuel piracy.

UK football fans currently need to subscribe to three streaming services to watch all available matches. DAZN getting in on the action raises the prospect of UK fans having to subscribe to four platforms to watch all televised matches. Or maybe even five, if Apple decides to get involved .

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Pirate IPTV providers and streaming websites offering discounted or even free access to live sports broadcasts are controversial worldwide.

Rightsholders say these illegal platforms threaten their business and need to be brought under control. In the European Union, pressure has been building on the European Commission to urgently address the problem, via new legislation if necessary, but responses thus far have left rightsholders underwhelmed.

Last October, over 100 rightsholders and organizations, including the MPA, UEFA, Premier League, beIN, LaLiga, Serie A, Sky, and BT Sport, told the European Commission time was running out. Three weeks later the EC rejected demands for legislative instruments or European-wide regulation but promised to come up with a recommendation on mitigation measures under existing law.

Following public submissions that mostly underlined rightsholders’ claims that existing law is inadequate, the EC began to prepare its recommendation for combating piracy. A draft leaked to the media last month revealed that rightsholders will be expected to wait for another three years while the situation is monitored for change.

Faced with the prospect of no legislative action until 2026, rightsholders vented their disappointment via the Live Content Coalition, well in advance of the recommendation’s official publication.

Two Dozen MEPs Issue Demands at the Highest Level

The Association of Commercial Television and Video on Demand Services in Europe ( ACT ) is leading the campaign for legislative change on behalf of its members, some of which are multi-billion dollar businesses in their own right.

This morning, ACT made public a letter sent to European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen. Dated April 28, 2023, it references the EC’s recommendation due to be published this week or, more accurately, the draft leaked to the media last month.

One Year Monitoring Period

Signed by 24 Members of the European Parliament, the letter is a follow-up to correspondence in March that called on the the Commission to “act decisively, efficiently and with the utmost priority against those who drain our creative economies.” Once again, a refusal to address the problem with urgent legislation is highlighted as a major concern.

“As previously outlined, we, together with many of our colleagues remain disappointed that the European Commission proposed a Recommendation despite unambiguous requests from the European Parliament for a legislative instrument,” the MEPs write.

“The only encouragement this house received from the European Commission can be found in the response from October 2022 which recognises that this issue should be tackled with urgency allowing for a solid and transparent monitoring system.”

The MEPs say they support the implementation of a monitoring period since producing performance data will incentivize “all the players in scope of the Recommendation” to act. What they cannot accept is that the suggested monitoring period, at least according to the leaked draft, is 36 months in duration.

“We took note from the press that a current draft of the Recommendation envisages a three-year review period. Such a lengthy timeframe will only benefit malicious actors to the detriment of our European creative and sports industries,” the MEPs warn.

“We strongly encourage the European Commission’s services under your authority to ensure that the final Recommendation – to be released in early May – includes a review period that is not longer than one year from publication.”

MEPs Ask EC President to Keep Promises

When the European Commission published its work program last October , it gave assurances that should the recommendation not generate “the desired effects in a timely manner,” further steps would be taken, “including by proposing new EU legislation addressing this significant problem.”

It’s unclear whether the leaked draft repeated or omitted that assurance but the MEPs insist that, for the avoidance of doubt, it needs to appear in the recommendation due for publication this week.

“Otherwise, our previous exchanges would be contradicted, Madam President, and the European Commission would demonstrate a lack of resolve in defending the rule of law in the European Union and delivering on the Commission’s commitment to ensure that what is illegal offline is illegal online,” the letter concludes.

The letter sent to EC President Ursula von der Leyen can be found here (pdf)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In mid-January, the European Commission (EC) issued a call for evidence to support a proposed “toolbox” of measures to combat live sports piracy.

Rightsholders usually welcome support at the EU level with open arms, but in this case it only increased frustrations. Last October a huge coalition of rightsholders called on the EC to introduce new law that would compel intermediaries to take pirate streams offline within minutes of a complaint.

The EC refused and offered existing law as the solution. For rightsholders claiming to have exhausted its limits, that clearly wasn’t ideal.

More Evidence Needed

Over a period of several years, rightsholders have reported in fine detail the numerous challenges they face when it comes to tackling piracy of live sports. Dozens of reports spanning thousands of pages have left almost no stone unturned. The issue is comprehensively mapped, to say the least.

This January, the EC issued a call for evidence so that rightsholders and other stakeholders could detail their problems all over again. The aim was to find solutions to these well-documented problems under existing law, which rightsholders insist is inadequate.

Whether anyone learned anything substantially new from that process is unknown but having gone through the motions, the EC’s recommendation will be officially released early May. Perhaps fittingly given the topic, the EC’s report has already leaked online and according to reports, rightsholders are underwhelmed by the document, to put it mildly.

Leaked Report Delivers Disappointment

While it must be frustrating for the EC to see its report publicly rejected in advance of its release, one gets the impression that nobody really expected the EC to come up with anything groundbreaking, at least not on the scale demanded by rightsholders.

Euractiv says the recommendation focuses on the “effective handling of take-down requests, dynamic injunctions, and voluntary cooperation” but for rightsholders already engaged in all of these things and more, that advice seems unlikely to inspire.

An anonymous representative of the Live Content Coalition , which counts the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) and several other major video groups as members, kept things simple with claims of hollow promises and a failure to act.

“We have consistently been assured by the European Commission that ‘what is illegal offline is illegal online’, yet there appears to be no urgency to enforce the rule of law in the case of piracy, despite the blatant theft of highly valuable, proprietary content which is undeniably taking place,” the unnamed representative told Euractiv.

Commission Suggests and Encourages (But Doesn’t Insist)

On the understanding that all recommendations must exist in the current legal framework, one of the points in Euractiv’s summary is that hosting services will be “asked to collaborate with rightsholders, notably by engaging with trusted flaggers,” to take down pirate streams as quickly as possible. That raises interesting questions.

Firstly, new legislation denied by the EC would more likely than not attempt to hold these same hosting services more liable for their customers’ activities, a major negative for companies in that sector. Yet now, they’re expected to warm to the idea of collaborating with rightsholders voluntarily, including by putting technical solutions in place to speed up the notification process.

In an entirely commercial environment, that leads to the question of incentives. The law doesn’t require collaboration behind its limits and currently protects intermediaries from liability. Not only are these the same protections rightsholders wish to forcibly limit, there appears to be no obvious commercial benefit for service providers.

The biggest conundrum is that the really big players in the pirate streaming market know that rightsholders want to limit their business, but are struggling to do so. The entities providing pirate IPTV infrastructure are selected because they’re good at it and, for one reason or another, are difficult to disrupt and are unlikely to collaborate.

And then there’s this:

“Intermediary services, like web hosting services, that can identify and locate the pirated transmission of live events are encouraged to cooperate with hosting services and rightsholders to identify the source of unauthorized retransmissions and prevent it from popping up again in so-called mirror websites once it is shut down.”

It will be interesting to read the official text to which this relates, and also what type of hosting services the EC has in mind. There are lots of services online that have the ability to identify and locate pirate streams but getting that information from them usually requires a legal process. The idea that this information can be shared between companies voluntarily is bound to raise eyebrows, if indeed that’s what the text suggests.

Action at National Level

Blocking injunctions are common around Europe but for rightsholders, not common enough. The EC suggests that dynamic blocking orders, such as those already in place in the UK and Ireland, should be assessed for suitability in EU countries that don’t currently have them. Again, questions are raised.

If EU countries don’t already have blocking injunctions in place, that suggests that either rightsholders haven’t gone to court to obtain them, or perhaps some kind of obstacle exists locally that renders them overly problematic or costly, for example. How requests for cooperation from the EC can solve these issues quickly is unknown.

Voluntary Cooperation

The remainder of the suggested measures are really just that – suggestions. Intermediaries that aren’t targeted with an injunction could choose to take “voluntary measures ” to prevent illegal streaming of live events. Advertisers and payment services could ensure that don’t help to finance or facilitate piracy.

Such voluntary actions aren’t unheard of. Perhaps the most notable is Google’s commitment to deindex domains from search results when they appear in court orders, despite those court orders having nothing to do with Google. Fresh requests were filed by Brazil recently and more will surely follow.

The reasons for Google’s cooperation are unknown but it’s highly unlikely it felt a bit sorry for rightsholders and just wanted to help out. Directly or indirectly, whether today or in the future, cooperating will have made commercial sense. If other intermediaries feel it’s in their interests, anything is possible.

Other EC proposals include turning blocked sites into advertising platforms for legal services, encouraging governments to allocate more resources to law enforcement, training judges, and encouraging rightsholders to “increase the availability, affordability, and attractiveness of their commercial offers to end users across the Union.”

There are some who argue that if rightsholders want unprecedented assistance to protect their profits, improving affordability for the public should be mandatory. It isn’t though, and it never will be, no matter how much ‘encouragement takes place.

EUIPO Will Monitor and Report Back

Perhaps the most bitter pill for rightsholders is that they’re unlikely to see changes to the law for at least three years. EUIPO looks set to monitor progress and within 36 months of the recommendation’s adoption, the Commission will assess its effectiveness.

The Live Content Coalition told Euractiv that’s just not good enough.

“The suggestion that the effects of the recommendation be assessed three years after its adoption is completely at odds with the urgency of the situation,” the anonymous representative said.

In the meantime, Italy is reportedly ready to launch the most aggressive live stream IPTV blocking program the world has ever seen – actioned under existing EU law, no amendments needed.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.