Rights holders in the sports world are taking action. Following a request from the Canal+ and beIN Sports France groups, the Paris court has decided that Internet service providers will have to block all pirate sites that illegally broadcast Champions League matches. This blocking is not based on a list of links defined in advance, but can be done on the fly, on sites that are not yet identified. This is indeed a possibility offered by the “Arcom law”, a new legislative framework which dates from last October 25th.
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BeIN Sports is satisfied. Asked by L’Equipe, the group believes that this measure will “significantly reduce access to fraudulent sites”. For its part, the Canal+ group speaks “a major step forward in the fight against audiovisual piracy in France”. These rights holders will also be able to rely on the support of UEFA which, in a press release, explains that it has commissioned two specialized companies. “They provide detection, monitoring and enforcement services related to live and non-live pirated content made available on commonly used social media platforms and across all internet platforms and services, such as websites web, IPTV services, P2P and unauthorized applications”writes the organization.
This is the third time that the Arcom law has been called upon to block content. In recent weeks, Canal + and BeIN Sports had already obtained similar court decisions, respectively for the Top14 and the African Cup. However, it is still a bit early to judge the real effectiveness of this measure. Generally, blocking of fraudulent sites is done through the DNS, which is quite easy to circumvent. On Twitter, a watchword is already circulating: “VPN”.
Source: The Team