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Italian football league Serie B has obtained an injunction aimed at preventing the illegal transmission of its football matches by illegal IPTV providers during the 21/22 season. The court order is “dynamic” which means that ISP blocking can be updated to cope with changing IPTV infrastructure and emerging threats.
Pirate IPTV services are a problem for many entertainment companies as they tend to offer high end products at a broken price. For just a few dollars, euros, or pounds a month, users are spoiled for choice with movies, TV shows, live TV and more just a click away.
One of the main concerns in Europe is the effect these services have on the television market, especially live sports. To that end, entities such as the English Premier League and Italian Serie A have sought and won a series of court orders requiring the country’s major service providers to implement IP address blocking. The theory is that if pirate IPTV providers are less easy to use, people will migrate to legitimate services.
In Italy, Serie A have secured several orders in the past year alone. In June 2020, for example, the Rome court issued an order requiring local internet service providers to block 56 servers connected to the provision of pirate IPTV services in Italy and overseas.
Later that year, Cloudflare had to block current and future domain names and IP addresses linked to a specific hacker service, a decision that was upheld on appeal.
Serie B launch their own blocking campaign
Serie B (currently known as Serie BKT for sponsorship reasons) is the second highest division in the Italian football system after Serie A. Its games are available through broadcasters such as Sky Sport and DAZN, but like its big brother Serie A, are also widely pirated. on unlicensed platforms.
In order to mitigate the threat, Serie B are now pursuing a familiar legal strategy.
This morning, the league reported a success in the Milan court after the filing in recent days of a complaint centered on the activities of several still unknown pirate IPTV providers. Serie B informed the court that urgent action was needed to prevent further illegal distribution of its content online and to prevent further damage to its license agreements with broadcasters and to its commercial image in general.
The football league asked the court to order the immediate blocking of “16 telematic addresses” relating to pirate IPTV providers. The details of this sentence have not yet been made public, but it is understood that the infrastructures of many vendors have been targeted within the app. The Court of Milan was happy to oblige.
Yet another “dynamic” injunction
The history of blocking sites and IP addresses has been hampered by the ability of pirate sites and services to adapt quickly to the new environment. When an IP address or domain is blocked by ISPs, switching to others is trivial. Serie B doesn’t want that to be the case here.
By obtaining a so-called “dynamic†order from the Court, it now has greater flexibility to react if providers change the way they operate. New IP addresses and domains, for example, can be passed to ISPs to be blocked, without the need for expensive and time-consuming legal action.
Serie B president Mauro Balata welcomed the granting of the blocking order.
“There is great satisfaction because of the serious damage suffered, the necessary protection of the product and the role of the exclusive licensees,†Balata said.
“For that, I would like to thank the Court of Milan but also our television partners who intervened in support of the request, building real teamwork necessary for the successful outcome of the appeal.
The injunction will remain in place for the 2021/22 season and requires all major ISPs to implement the block.
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