Sunday, February 21st, 2021

Time	Event
8:29a	Pirate IPTV Providers With Millions of Visits Blocked Following La Liga Request Top-tier football is massive business in Europe with a handful of major leagues in key regions grabbing the lion’s share of the market. For example, the Premier League has dominance in the UK while in Italy and Spain, Serie A and La Liga control the purse strings to their lucrative broadcasting rights. But while the clubs in all leagues are necessarily rivals in competition, all have something in common – the ongoing fight to prevent unlicensed streaming providers from broadcasting matches to the public. Pirate IPTV is Seen As The Major Threat Live sports broadcasts, including football, have been available on web-based streaming sites for years but the rise of subscription-based IPTV providers is now the major threat. Premier League, Serie A and La Liga are all involved in countermeasures, which include legal action (both civil and criminal) plus site-blocking in various countries. This week it was revealed that Serie A had been successful in its legal action against Cloudflare, requiring the CDN company to block access to providers offering its games illegally in Italy. It now transpires that Spain’s La Liga has booked progress of its own in Italy, albeit by a different mechanism. La Liga’s Request to Block Five Pirate IPTV Providers For more than half a decade it’s been possible to file an application with local telecoms watchdog AGCOM to have pirate sites and services added to a national ISP blacklist. This is somewhat controversial since, in contrast to other countries around Europe, there is no need for rightsholders to go to court. Instead, AGCOM can review cases and grant injunctions without judicial overview, which it does on a regular basis. Indeed, according to comments made by anti-piracy group FAPAV this week, in 2020 it obtained permission to have 376 ‘illegal sites’ blocked by ISPs via this route. This process is also being utilized by La Liga which according to reports this week, has just been successful in an application to have five pirate IPTV providers blocked by Italian ISPs. The blocking request dates back to October 2020 and after a few months’ wait, has now come into force. In keeping with Italy’s general position of not openly publicizing the IPTV services it targets, no names were detailed this week. However, according to comments from local anti-piracy group FAPAV, the five platforms are good for more than a million visits per month each, in Italy alone. This adds to the growing list of IPTV providers targeted in Italy by various legal means (1,2,3). La Liga Pleased With The Decision to Block “We are of the belief that audiovisual recordings of sporting events deserve solid protection through the application of intellectual property rules and, more precisely, copyright. La Liga has been working for more than five years to ensure that this protection is recognized,” says Juan José Rotger, La Liga’s Global Content Protection Manager. “This new result in Italy is a reflection of the constancy and commitment in the network with the local authorities. Serie A has been doing an excellent job in the country for some time and has also helped us in this scenario. The success is that there is less piracy and that these rights continue to be recognized worldwide.” La Liga Blocking Action Elsewhere in Europe La Liga is no stranger to blocking procedures. In a collaboration with Danish anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, the Spanish league obtained a first-of-its-kind ISP blocking injunction in Denmark in 2019. It targeted nine pirate providers and required local ISP Telenor to restrict subscriber access to the platforms. However, under the Danish ISP Code of Conduct, other major ISPs in Denmark were also required to implement blocks against the sites listed in the complaint as part of a voluntary agreement. In February 2020, a Spanish court gave dynamic blocking the green light in another football related case, authorizing the modification of injunctions to counter circumvention and evasion techniques. From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. (Comment on this)
6:17p	DMCA Notice Wipes Reverse-Engineered GTA Code from GitHub Grand Theft Auto is one of the most iconic game series. The first version came out in the late nineties and many have followed since, capturing the hearts and minds of millions of gamers. Last week, a group of passionate fans released a project that had many hardcore GTA fans excited. After years of work they published “Re3” and “reVC,” two fully reverse-engineered releases of the GTA 3 and Vice City code. The reverse-engineered code opens the door to many tweaks and modifications that make the old games much more playable on modern computers. That said, it still requires an official copy to work properly because the game assets are not included. The release got a lot of attention in the media when it came out, including an excellent report from Eurogamer. While the project leader “aap” was happy with the positive reactions, it meant that Take-Two and its parent company Rockstar Games would notice as well. For months, the team avoided getting an angry letter from the game publishers. They hoped that the companies would not go after the projects when they were posted on GitHub either. However, that was idle hope. On Friday GitHub posted a DMCA takedown notice where Take-Two and Rockstar Games request the removal of the “Re3” and “reVC” repositories, as well as several forks. “The content in the links below consists of copyrighted materials owned by Take-Two. The use of our copyrighted content in these links are unauthorized and it should be removed immediately,” the notice reads. Project leader “aap” isn’t entirely convinced that this notice actually comes from the game company. For now, however, he’s working on the assumption that it’s real. GitHub also took the matter seriously and immediately removed the repositories. The platform further notes that it “processed the takedown notice against the entire fork network.” In theory, “aap” and his team can file a DMCA counter-notice. This means that GitHub will have to restore the code after two weeks, unless Take-Two files a lawsuit. A legal battle isn’t cheap so “aap” and his team will try to figure out the nature of the takedown claims first. Under US law, reverse-engineering can be seen as fair use, but this area is a bit of a minefield. For example, people can circumvent DRM restrictions in order to reverse engineer a game for research or educational use. However, publishing the code online is something different. The EFF has a detailed write-up on reverse engineering that lays out the various challenges, showing how complicated the matter can be. In its DMCA notice, Take-Two notes that it has taken fair use into consideration. So, if the project creators decide to challenge the removal, this matter could eventually end up in court. Fair use or not, one might wonder how much damage these two projects were actually causing. They’re not commercial and shouldn’t impact sales significantly, since both games are nearly two decades old. If anything, they promote the GTA enterprise. Take-Two and Rockstar Games obviously disagree. Perhaps they are concerned that some will exploit the code in some shape or form. However, the DMCA notice isn’t going to solve that, as copies of “Re3” and “reVC” are still available to those who know where to look… From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more. (Comment on this)

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