Efforts to prevent access to pirated match streaming have led French telecom operators to block 1,300 websites, at the request of television channels and by court order.
Watching sports competitions illegally has become more difficult in France. The reason ? France has had a new legal framework since October 2021, which allows rights holders – the channels holding the rights to broadcast matches – to attack more frontally pirate streaming sites to obtain their blocking.
The holders of sports rights have also been quick to seize this new lever to prevent Internet users located in France from connecting to certain previously identified sites. From January 2022, several sites have been successfully targeted by beIN Sports. It was the first such action since the new anti-piracy law came into force in October 2021.
Since then, operations have followed one another – often for football matches, like the PSG – Real Madrid meeting last February, but also when the World Cup was held in Qatar. Today, according to a summary made by the Regulatory Authority for Audiovisual and Digital Communication (Arcom), 1,299 sites have been blocked.
Blockages requested under the influence of the emergency
In this context, legal proceedings can be initiated urgently to obtain rapid intervention from the courts, but also from Internet service providers (Orange, SFR, Bouygues Telecom and Free, for the most part) to neutralize the disputed platforms, as well as any mirror site that attempts to offer a workaround.
There is an important difference between the fight against piracy in sports and that concerning cultural works, such as films and series. As soon as the match is over and the score known, the “value” of the broadcast collapses. It is therefore crucial, for rights holders, to counter illicit retransmission before (or at the very beginning) of the match.
And indeed, Arcom commends the diligence with which the operators have applied the measures requested. According to the authority, which signed an agreement on January 18 with the Association for the Protection of Sports Programs and the four ISPs, efforts in this direction will increase further — in sight, the evolution of practices of Internet users to avoid these blockages.
” New modes of access to fraudulent services (illegal IPTV, VPN or alternative DNS) require always looking for the most relevant measures to put in place, such as soliciting all the actors likely to intervene to put an end to attacks on rights “, recognizes the Arcom. There are also pirate broadcasts on legal sites, like Twitter and Twitch.
But, according to Arcom, this work pays off despite the solutions to find a hole in the racket. ” In the first half of 2022 alone, the overall illicit sports audience thus fell by half (49%) “says the authority. And according to her, Internet users are not always so well equipped with computers to know how to circumvent an ISP blockage.
Help us build the future of Numerama by answering this survey!