p2pnet - rss feed: P2p footie streaming a No-No
p2pnet.net News:- German Premier League soccer club Bayern Munich recently said it was ready to sue GooTube for video copyright infringement, and about this time last year, the UK Premier League was tracking sites offering illegal streaming of live football and was planning legal action against the ISPs hosting the sites.
Now, “The FA Premier League, Uefa, Cricket Australia and other sport bodies have employed a company called NetResult to police the internet for unauthorised video,” says the BBC.
“Unauthorised video” means p2p viewing and, “China, already in trouble with American entertainment and software cartels for failing to put a stop to the thriving underground counterfeit production industry, is also now under attack for its burgeoning p2p streaming TV enterprises,” p2pnet reported in 2005, going on:
“And ironically, for a change, commercial p2p companies aren’t in the firing line. Instead, the likes of Microsoft and RealNetworks are named as the preferred delivery vehicles.”
Another BBC story says, “An independent website has been told to stop putting footage of FA Premiership goals on the video website YouTube. “NetResult - a firm monitoring the internet on behalf of the Premier League - emailed a warning to the website, 101greatgoals.blogspot.com. It told the website it was ‘infringing’ Premier League copyright. Links from 101greatgoals to YouTube were thought to have been disabled by YouTube itself but other links to Premiership goals stayed in place.”
According to the most recent Beeb item, it’s an “ongoing challenge,” says NetResult’s Tim Cooper. “You could shut a website down today but tomorrow another 10 will appear.”
Saturday premiership matches aren’t shown on TV in the UK for fear that stadium attendances could suffer, says the BBC, but “most are available on the peer-to-peer services”.
Some games are also streamed directly from individual sites, “and NetResult said it was lobbying internet service providers to shut these down,” states the BBC, adding, “The BBC is currently prohibited from showing footage of Premier League goals on its website.”
“The FA Premier League execs get their panties in a bunch everytime someone puts footage from Premiership matches online for public viewing without ‘authorization’,” says Ahmed on BlogFC, going on:
Considering that there are forums built entirely for this purpose and that there are thousands of such videos uploaded on YouTube every week, you can imagine the discomfort the Premier League has been feeling.
So what do they do? The hire NetResult to monitor the Internet, and they find, amongst other things, plenty of videos on YouTube. So they sent a DMCA notice to YouTube highlighting a bunch of videos (101greatgoals were not the only ones to suffer here - my 7 clips from the Chelsea - Reading match were ‘removed’) and now we have a mess where bloggers who don’t have the foggiest idea about copyright law are being bullied for sharing something they love.
I remember an earlier incident like this when I put up Arsenal’s season fixtures on Soccerlens and got a similar email warning - the license for the right to display season fixtures is 1700 Pounds, or something of that sort.
So now the question is - where will this lead us and where does it stop? If NetResult manage to do their job right (something I doubt but fear might happen), every website showing footage from Premiership matches will start receiving copyright violation notices.
From what little I know of such situations…if things go from push to shove, the Premier League will have to serve a DMCA notice to a website’s hosting service in order to force them to shut down that website (until the copyrighted material is removed). And rest assured; these guys have the organisational clout, and more importantly the pigheadedness required for such an undertaking.
So now what?
I’ll tackle the ‘copyright’ issue another time - for now, I invite you to visit my YouTube profile and watch all the goals I’ve uploaded before they are removed
Update: This happened before Google’s acquisition of YouTube, but it is interesting nevertheless.
Stay tuned.
Also See:
copyright infringement - Bayern Munich takes on YouTube, November 9, 2006
BBC - Illegal net sport faces crackdown, November 29, 2006
p2pnet reported - Coming soon: p2p TV streaming, September 3, 2005
BBC - Goal footage warning for website, October 31, 2006
BlogFC - Premier League comes after football bloggers, October 21, 2006
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