The fight against piracy is struggling to make concrete progress in France. Sports broadcasters are teaming up to put the pressure on to speed things up.
In addition to the very problematic call for tenders for French football TV rights, a new major problem has emerged with the arrival of DAZN on the big stage. The high price announced at the start, the fed up of possible subscribers, and the multiplication of platforms to follow Ligue 1, caused a massive influx of illegal content to follow our championship. From streaming, IPTV, links on networks, prohibited content has exploded and the British channel officially complained, announcing that this process had cost it many subscribers. The fight against piracy obviously also concerns other broadcasters, and Canal+ as well as BeIN Sports are working to ensure that sanctions fall much more quickly in this often losing fight against pirated content.
Examples in Italy and England
Thus, the two media with very numerous sports rights are pushing for France to follow the processes in England and Italy where blockages are no longer requested through legal channels, but are systematic as soon as they are spotted. This is why, with the support of the LFP, a call was made to change these measures and create a “specific offense” concerning the piracy of sports content. “ We would like to obtain real-time blocking of IP addresses and an end-to-end automated process which would improve responsiveness. », Underlines Sarah d'Arifat, legal director of BeIN Sports, in the columns of Le Monde. A modification that will be difficult to make, even if the authorities recognize the exceptional nature of having to act quickly while a match is broadcast. But blocking access to content on the Internet is not as easy legally, and France is not known for facilitating these actions without looking twice, that is to say having human resources to facilitate these measures more draconian. A brake which for the moment does not allow us to gain the upper hand over the illegal content which abounds, and enrages DAZN like Canal+ and BeIN Sports.
France
Soccer
