Movistar and LaLiga have identified a total of 79 Internet domains that must be blocked for the piracy of audiovisual content, as established in the recent judgment of the Commercial Court number 9 of Barcelona, which allows them to block access to websites on a weekly basis which facilitate the illicit dissemination of the content of the main football tournament in Spain.
This resolution resolves one of two new disputes in this area won by the operator, including one with LaLiga. The convictions, the second from Barcelona’s Number 6 Commercial Court, consolidate anti-piracy case law, as announced yesterday Five days.
The number of illicit domains cited in the new ruling is far greater than previous similar court rulings. For example, in the first major decision against the well-known phenomenon Rojadirecta, established by a court in Madrid at the beginning of 2020, a first list was drawn up with a total of 44 websites with illegal content.
The new phrase identifies all kinds of platforms and technological modalities that enable the illegal dissemination of content. These include pirate IPTV, platforms that publish M3U listings, which the user can click on and access the pirated content, either through a computer or through a clever TV.
The resolution identifies websites that offer diffusion and links, which broadcast content accessible live or by subscription. Another of the modalities identified are the classic Torrents, which allow the exchange of files between Internet users, including the modality of diffusion P2P or air flow.
Thus, the list included in the aforementioned judgment includes recognized domains such as Acestream.org, Arenavision.site, www.rojadirectatvenvivo.com, m.rojadirecta.fun, www.ovostreams.com or iptvparatodos.app, among other addresses . .
For example, Acestream has gained great relevance through its software development platform allowing you to watch football for free. Arenavision has also become well known for delivering exceptional sports content, such as football or Formula 1.
Treat
In the process, the plaintiffs, Telefónica Audiovisual Digital (TAD), parent company of Movistar+, and LaLiga filed an ordinary lawsuit, asking for precautionary measures, against the large operators, for infringement of their intellectual property rights. They requested that their customers’ access from Spanish territory to the identified pirate websites be blocked or prevented, in the interest that the blocking measure continue dynamically on the platforms, websites, replica domains (mirror) that could be created or had access points. connection, in order to avoid blocking the commands.
In the new process there is an increase in the number of operators, since Digi has been included, given the relevance it has acquired by exceeding four million customers in the Spanish market. Thus, the defendants are Orange Spain, Vodafone Spain, Vodafone Ono, MásMóvil, Digi and Telefónica de España and Telefónica Móviles España themselves. In the process, the operators acquiesced to the request for interim measures. The plaintiffs consented to the search, without requesting the imposition of costs.
In their writings, they indicated that numerous cases of digital piracy had been detected, affecting in a flagrant way the exploitation of their rights. Likewise, they identified the different models of piracy of audiovisual content on the Internet, in particular sports, by quantifying the economic losses.
The judgment establishes the blocking of infringing websites in their various forms on the Internet, URLs, websites, domains or IP addresses. Further monitoring is also envisioned for three sports seasons, through 2024-2025, of these blocked web resources to identify changes in their ways of recognizing them. Finally, it is specified that there will be weekly communication to the various Internet access providers of the identifications of the pirate web resources subject to blocking, for the update of the execution of the blocking.
In the aforementioned judgment of the Commercial Court number 6 of Barcelona, in this case following the lawsuit brought only by Movistar+, it is established in the procedure that the blocking of the pirate websites identified by TAD must be carried out within a maximum period of time three hours from the notification of the new listing.
Damage of 231 million euros per year
costs. In their lawsuit, Telefónica and LaLiga warned of the high costs that piracy imposes on content rights holders. In the case of football, according to the Observatory of piracy and consumption habits of digital content 2020, carried out by the independent consultancy GfK, the damage caused by the illegal broadcasting of matches amounts to 231 million euros .
Industry. In the aforementioned observatory, this industry is assigned a value of 1,150 million euros, which, with the aforementioned shortfall, would exceed 1,381 million euros. In other words, the value of the industry would increase by 20%. “This would amount to multiplying by 1.2 times the current value of the industry,” the report said.
overall impact. In total, in 2020, there were 5.239 million illegal accesses to content of various types, for a value of 30.892 million euros, with a loss for the sector of 2.416 million.
Funding. The Piracy Observatory recalls that illicit portals are financed either by obtaining personal data from those who register to access content (seven out of ten consumers who have accessed illicit content had to register) , or through advertising and means of payment.