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      Premier League IPTV Piracy Clickbait Reaches New Low, But Will Go Lower

      news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · 5 days ago - 13:37 · 3 minutes

    clown-dmca Being able to receive and impart knowledge and ideas with other people is one of the most important things any human will ever do.

    The information shared or received won’t always be accurate, even if we believe it is. It might not be accurate even if it appears in several widely read online newspapers. All anyone really expects is a tiny effort to ensure that they aren’t being fed fabricated nonsense made up on the spot.

    Apparently, even that’s too much to ask; illegal streaming detector cars , really?

    Something Something PIRACY SHIELD WARNING

    The image below shows how Google responds to a search for a very specific term. The search term ‘piracy shield’ relates to an anti-piracy system that enjoyed its full launch in Italy on February 2, 2024. We’ve written about Piracy Shield and the legislation supporting it on dozens of occasions, including numerous times in the last few weeks.

    piracy shield news

    Of the available ‘Top Stories’ space, we get a quarter while the remaining 75% is allocated to three extremely popular, UK-focused publications, all of which expend considerable resources on SEO and here, tell exactly the same ‘story’.

    While TorrentFreak’s regular readers will already know what Piracy Shield is , who built it and why , exactly how it functions from a technical perspective, and all of its ‘secret’ targets thus far , it’s likely that readers of the publications above were less aware of it.

    After reading the articles, not much would’ve improved.

    Stand By Brits, This Will End Illegal Streaming, FOREVER

    The Piracy Shield system was donated by Italian football league Serie A to Italian telecoms regulator, AGCOM. The technical section of an Italian law firm worked on development, the system was accredited for use in Italy under Italian law, and is currently hard at work trying to block access to Italian content, in Italy.

    That obviously leads seamlessly and not at all unnaturally to headlines like these.

    Given these end-of-days headlines, some may have been comforted that the doom portrayed at the start of the articles had completely disappeared by the end.

    From “the crackdown may stop games being streamed illegally for good” at the start, to variations on “there are no plans for a similar procedure to be adopted in the UK” at the end. That’s either the most miraculous recovery seen recently, or the textbook definition of clickbait.

    Unfortunately, it doesn’t matter, because it’s still not entirely true. Or indeed true at all.

    Anyone Remember The Premier League?

    The Piracy Shield system in Italy exists in the main to block pirate sports streams, delivered by premium IPTV piracy platforms or those accessed via web-based streaming portals. To ensure the legality of blocking under Italian law, so-called ‘precautionary measures’ with the ability to adapt to changing circumstances, i.e evasive action by pirates, are issued against pirate sites.

    If these ‘dynamic injunctions’ and a Piracy Shield-type system turned up in the UK tomorrow, the scenarios outlined in the articles above definitely would not happen, and for very good reason.

    Always Credit The Source

    Dynamic injunctions for tackling live sports piracy were actually pioneered and developed in the UK, by none other than the Premier League.

    In fact, in Football Association Premier League Ltd v British Telecommunications Plc & Ors. (2017/2018) , the High Court of England and Wales issued the first ever dynamic injunctions for tackling live sports in favor of the Premier League. Since then, such injunctions have been in constant force at ISPs around the country, season in, season out, controlled and executed by the by Premier League’s own system.

    That’s six/seven years of experience for the Premier League. Piracy Shield launched four weeks ago.

    Think of it like the scene in Monty Python and the Holy Grail where King Arthur tries to use the Holy Grail as leverage over the master of a French castle, but is informed that the master probably won’t be interested since “he’s already got one.”

    Or just make something up.

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

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      How Hollywood Keeps Breeding New Pirates

      Ernesto Van der Sar · news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Sunday, 18 April, 2021 - 14:38 · 2 minutes

    the cw not available For online media consumers, things have improved significantly over the years. More content is made available globally than ever before.

    The music industry continues to be at the forefront of this transformation. In most countries, legal services are plentiful and affordable. However, the same can’t be said for online video.

    While there has been plenty of progress in the availability of movie and TV shows, more problems are created as well. This is one of the main reasons why piracy remains relevant. Even those who want to do the right thing have to be rather self-disciplined to avoid becoming a pirate.

    Popular TV-Shows Vanish Locally

    One doesn’t have to look far to find some examples of this happening in real-time. Just a few days ago, my 12-year-old niece asked if I knew where she could watch “The Vampire Diaries” and “The Originals,” which are both scheduled to leave Netflix in a few weeks here in the Netherlands.

    My niece is lucky as her parents already have a subscription to Netflix, Amazon Prime, Disney+, Discovery+ and a local streaming platform. However, there is no evidence that any of these services will offer those TV shows when they leave Netflix.

    Needless to say, my niece was disappointed when I told her. She’s a passionate fan of these shows and not being able to watch them is a disaster in a teenage mind.

    Not the First Setback

    Sadly, this isn’t the first setback for my niece either. In recent weeks she already got frustrated by the inability to watch “Legacies”, which is another popular The CW series in the same genre.

    Meanwhile, she is looking at hundreds of people who post clips and screenshots of the show on TikTok, Snapchat, and elsewhere. My niece would love to join the party, but she can’t. Not legally at least.

    For a moment I was tempted to mention that some people use pirate sites to illegally get these instead, but I chose not to. However, I’m pretty sure that it won’t take long before someone suggests this option to her. And what will happen then?

    In an attempt to find out why these and other shows are not being made available internationally, I reached out to The CW. The company swiftly replied and pointed me to Warner Bros TV and CBS TV Studios, who are the official distributors.

    At What Cost?

    Unfortunately, after several days I’m still waiting for a response from these companies but it is likely that money and licensing play a major role in their decision not to offer the content.

    The question is, at what cost? Is it wise to deprive some of the biggest fans of watching their favorite shows, which are readily available elsewhere? Could this somehow backfire?

    Without knowing it, my niece answered this question for me. A few days after our chat, her parents noticed that there were several dubious movie streaming apps on their tablet. Apparently, someone was trying to watch her favorite shows through a backdoor.

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

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      The Exploitive Business Model of Academic Publishers Fuels Piracy

      Ernesto Van der Sar · news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Saturday, 27 February, 2021 - 21:27 · 3 minutes

    A few years ago I reached out to an academic researcher, asking for a copy of a paper that was just published in a prominent journal.

    We regularly report on piracy-related research and many of these papers are hidden behind paywalls. Researchers are often willing to share a review copy, but not always.

    Giving Up Copyrights

    In this case, the author was very reluctant to share the article. While he would like to see the work covered by a news site, he feared repercussions from the publisher. Why? Because like most researchers, the author had to give up his copyrights in order to be published.

    To outsiders, this may sound bizarre. Why would the person who came up with the idea, did the research, and wrote up the results, have to give up the copyrights? Welcome to the world of academic publishing.

    While there may be some exceptions, the majority of the “high impact” academic journals are owned by for-profit publishers. These earn billions of dollars, in part by charging academic institutions for access. Yes, the same institutions that pay the researchers.

    Paywall Barriers

    To make matters worse, the paywalls prevent less fortunate academics from accessing the work of their colleagues. In some cases, researchers even find their own articles behind a paywall.

    These billion-dollar companies essentially have a stranglehold on science. While copyright is supposed to “ promote the progress of science ,” the major publishers restrict access to millions of people, mostly in developing countries.

    This system has led to a situation where academic researchers actively use ‘pirate’ sites to access research literature. For many academics, Sci-Hub has become the go-to site for unrestricted access to scientific papers.

    The Sci-Hub ‘Threat’

    Needless to say, the publishers are not happy. Companies such as Elsevier, Wiley and Springer Nature are taking countermeasures. US Courts have ordered Sci-Hub to pay millions of dollars in damages and publishers are actively trying to have the site blocked by ISPs.

    The most recent blocking attempt is currently taking place in India. Despite the mounting pressure, Elkabyan refuses to give up what she stands for and continues to push back.

    Sci-Hub Founder Highlights Publisher Problems

    In a recent interview with the Indian news site The Wire , Elbakyan neatly summarizes the “exploitive” business model of the publishers.

    “The careers of researchers depend on journal publications. To receive funding or secure positions at the university, a scientist must have publications in ‘high-impact’ academic journals,” she notes.

    In other words, the research only ‘counts’ if it’s published in high-profile journals, which are often controlled by large corporations. Putting exactly the same paper on a university site is pointless.

    The publishers essentially have a monopoly on science. A pretty healthy one as well, because all the hard work is done by people they don’t have to pay.

    Publishers are Organizers, Not Creators

    “Researchers do the actual work: they invent the hypothesis, do the experiments and write the articles describing the results of these experiments. Then they publish this article in an academic journal,” says Sci-Hub’s founder.

    “Publishers send articles they have received to other scientists for peer-review. Reviewers give their opinion on whether the work should be accepted in a journal or not, or if some additional work must be done. Based on these reviews, the article is published or rejected.

    “Both reviewers and scientists work for free. They do not earn any compensation from the academic publisher. Here, academic publishers work as organizers of the academic community, but not as creators. The work of the academic publisher is organizational and not creative.”

    Progress of Science

    That last comment hits the nail on the head. While there are probably many nuances, most people would agree that the researchers are the real creators here. They are the definition of the “progress of science.” Paywalls certainly aren’t.

    That brings us back to the author I requested a paper from a few years ago. After repeated requests, also to the publisher, I never managed to get a copy. The paywall worked, but does that help science?

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