Tuesday 14 March 2017

FA Premier League takes extra step to fight piracy - admission that DMCA is not working

Very interesting order from Justice Arnold this week in which, for a period from this Saturday to the end of this FAPL season, will require the main UK ISP's to block certain streaming server IP addresses which stream FAPL content live. The blocking will occur in real time based on information provided by a technical provider to the FAPL to the ISP's.

The FAPL have experimented with blocking orders before but previously they were aimed at websites and despite arguments to the contrary were fairly easily avoided using proxies.

Contained within the judgement were the following comments;

1. The problem of illegal streaming is getting bigger
2. The audiences are large
3. DMCA notices are not effective with non-compliant operators

Of the 3 criteria being used to justify the blocking one was kept confidential to minimise risk of circumvention  but the other two are;

1. FAPL and its contractor must reasonably believe that the server has the sole or predominant purpose of enabling or facilitating access to infringing streams of Premier League match footage.
2. FAPL and its contractor must not know or have reason to believe that the server is being used for any other substantial purpose.

Collateral damage is a key issue therefore.

Ian Mill QC instructed by DLA Piper acted for the FAPL.

Klipcorp IP will monitor the effectiveness of this approach this Saturday and report back on initial effectiveness levels.

If this approach works it will be a major step forward in dealing with piracy and hats off to the FAPL for taking the risk of failure here.

Areas likely to provide a technical challenge are;

Deliberate concealing or spoofing of the source video stream IP address leading to blocking of the wrong IP
Rapid automated switching of IP address between different hosts
Unanticipated collateral damage.


 More information early next week.


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