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Piracy Television The Internet Entertainment

Twitch Has Become a Haven For Live Sports Piracy (wired.com) 36

Posted by BeauHD from the mainstream-popularity dept.
An anonymous reader quotes a report from Wired: Twitch has been and remains home to illicit sports broadcasts; a late December boxing match attracted over 86,000 viewers -- some of whom spammed ASCII genitalia in chat -- and a mid-January soccer match drew over 70,000 over three livestreams. Although Twitch often stomps them out mid-match, plenty of livestreams posted by throwaway accounts with innocuous names like "Untitled" slip through the cracks and garner tens of thousands of viewers. As the value of sports media rights has climbed to over $20 billion, copyright holders have more incentive than ever to guard their treasure. Yet piracy persists, in part because it's so burdensome for copyright holders to catch it. Stream aggregation site FirstRow Sports lays out a buffet of illicit livestreams for games ranging from ice hockey to basketball and attracts over 300,000 daily visitors, according to data from web analytics firm SimilarWeb. In January 2019 alone, sports fans accessed sports piracy sites 362.7 million times, according to data from digital piracy research firm Muso. On Discord, anonymous benefactors distribute links to soccer livestreams like handfuls of pigeon feed at the park. Once a stream is taken down, another immediately manifests. It's like 40 games of Whac-A-Mole simultaneously taking place in 40 adjacent arcades.

Increasingly, those links lead to Twitch, whose credentials as a mainstream platform make it a relatively safe option -- especially after Reddit shut down the popular soccer piracy subreddit r/soccerstreams. "The older days of streams (5+ years ago) was [sic] littered with ads and viruses," says a soccer stream Discord moderator who goes by Tom. "even though it is considered illegal, I see it being the same as watching porn and being under 18." He adds that some of the hairier-looking piracy sites are still more popular, offer higher-quality streams, and have live chats that utilize Twitch chats' code. Twitch's DMCA guidelines specify that copyright owners can submit takedown requests, and asks the people who submit them to add a "statement under penalty of perjury" that they're authorized to act on behalf of the copyright owner. Occasionally, media companies file claims to Twitch impacting legitimate streamers who commentate over or react to games, television, or YouTube clips. Copyright holders can also choose to sue, as the third-largest internet company in Russia did against Twitch in December for broadcasting an English Premier League streams. It's a rare escalation, and one that underscores how serious an issue Twitch sports piracy has become. Twitch "only provides users access to the platform, does not post its own content, cannot change the content posted by users, or track possible violations of rights," says Twitch lawyer Yuliana Tabastayeva.

The live streaming service said it will "continue to, as has always been the case, effectively and swiftly address any violation of its terms of service with the removal of unlicensed copyrighted content."
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Twitch Has Become a Haven For Live Sports Piracy More

Twitch Has Become a Haven For Live Sports Piracy

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  • When I was young, sports broadcasts were free (besides the commercials).
    With all the clutter of all those seperate services, it's almost unaffordable to take out a subscription on all streaming services.
    And they make it damn near impossible to buy a subscribtion if you are living abroad.
    Fix the system instead of accusing us 'pirates'.

    • When you were young only a small fraction of events were televised, you could only see away games, NFL coverage was limited to your local team....

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by rtb61 ( 674572 )

      One of the reason I really enjoy the internet, Sports. Being able to completely avoid the jock strap douche bag spectacles of empty beliefs and bullshit marketing. The idea of all those loser failed jock strap adults, who watch sports and dream of their own absent glory, trapped in an empty behaviour by reinforcement of that hiding place from their own sport and glory failure.

      The worth of spectator sports is dropping, the internet simply offers too much opportunity for interaction, rather than empty spectat

      • Re: (Score:2, Troll)

        by 110010001000 ( 697113 )

        I understand. It must have been bad to get beat up by jocks in school. At least you got over it.

      • The idea of all those loser failed jock strap adults

        Until you realize these guys all became personal trainers who grew up and got paid to abuse people...

        The only real satisfaction is if you pay them, you pay them your left-overs and tend to drop them when you lose a few pounds. But they're the ones out there behind all the misleading and usually wrong marketing about the role of exercise and fitness in weight loss.

    • With all the clutter of all those seperate services, it's almost unaffordable to take out a subscription on all streaming services.

      I'm predicting pirating will rise until this gets sorted out. Maybe not 1998 levels of free-for-all piracy, but a lot.

  • "Twitch "only provides users access to the platform, does not post its own content, cannot change the content posted by users, or track possible violations of rights," says Twitch lawyer Yuliana Tabastayeva."
     
    That is literally the same excuse these types of companies always use. As if it absolves them from any responsibility.

    • It's not reasonable to expect them to catch all illegal content, but if a new streamer gets 10,000 viewers out of nowhere, something is out of the ordinary.

    • It does doesn't it? If you post child porn on a website should the ISP get in trouble or should the person posting the illegal images? Smaller platforms are acting more and more as sub sections of the internet itself that need to be as free and open as the internet. These sub sections in some cases like youtube and facebook are even larger communities than the entire internet was 20 years ago. It reminds me how Hollywood accused Google of linking to pirate sites. If Google didn't find the pirate sites the
    • Your internet provider is therefore guilty for any and all transgressions - be it piracy, hacking or serving pron to minors. Do YOU want your ISP to be your nanny? Do YOU want your ISP to decide what you can or cannot watch / download or do on the internet? If so... MOVE TO CHINA!

  • Piracy because its easier. (Score:3)

    by Arzaboa ( 2804779 ) on Wednesday January 15, 2020 @08:22PM (#59624830)

    These folks enjoy watching sports together and talking about it together. Nothing else provides that. Cable companies make you bend over backwards to sign up for whatever package you might need that day. A large portion of these folks simply want to hang out in the same chat room as other people they know watching something. A crowd attracts a crowd.

    If it wasn't so difficult to watch these sports events in the way people wanted to, this wouldn't be such a big deal.

    --
    Some people do really find fault like there's a reward for it. - Zig Ziglar

  • "some of whom spammed ASCII genitalia in chat"

    This is an important detail why?

    • Maybe the reporter was new to Twitch? Usually chat moderators quickly delete such spam, but I imagine pirate streamers don't care.

    • Because it's genitalia! Can't have that! I mean, the next thing they will expect is us to look down when we take a piss and look at our own genitalia! Can't have THAT! OH MY GODS!!!! THE HORROR!!!!!!!

      Although my wife is of the opinion I spray and pray anyway, but that's a separate subject.

    • "some of whom spammed ASCII genitalia in chat"

      This is an important detail why?

      It's the most horrific thing to some people. They'll hapily sit there and watch the most exteme kinds of violence in films but flash a nipple and there will be hell to pay.

  • I know a few but it seems the younger you go the fewer fans and the less hardcore. Seems like there's so much else like more immersive video games that there's going to be a reckoning one of these days. Maybe they shouldnt try to alienate the fans they have.
  • "Live sports" is something you watch at the venue, with your own eyes. Don't want "pirates"? Well, don't broadcast.
    • I'm just going to assume you have been living in a cave, or are attempting to be humorous... or something, and have just discovered a computer and decided to post inane comments on /.
      Live sports broadcasts means that if you HAD been standing at the venue, what was happening there is what you would be watching on your TV/Computer etc. It's not a recording of last nights game, it's "Live" as in happening right now. Where I live certain broadcasting channels get the "Live" broadcast at a cheaper rate by del
  • how serious an issue Twitch sports piracy has become
    Serious for whom? For the few copyright holders that see the technology naturally destroying their business? I smell Smith's candlemaker argument.

  • Am I supposed to care?

  • Piracy is cheaper... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by nucleartool ( 1047692 ) on Thursday January 16, 2020 @03:07AM (#59625498)
    I live in the UK and enjoy premier league football. It used to be that sky broadcasting had the rights to all premier league and champions league games and it cost roughly £30 a month for their sports package. Fair enough, quality and coverage was very good. But, it was decided sky had a monopoly. So, BTs TV network were allowed to purchase some games from sky to break that monopoly. BT also then massively outbid sky on champions league games and so Sky lost that on their channels. The end result is anyone wanting to watch one of the top teams in all competitions now had 2 sport package subscriptions to buy. So cost doubled, at minimum because neither company would sell you the missing Content for a fair price unless you took their full tv/broadband package at the same time. I literally had two internet connections at one point until I saw sense and looked at other options.... And now amazon is getting some premier league games too, which you have to pay for as well. Is it any wonder folk are sick of it?

    • I live in the UK and enjoy premier league football. It used to be that sky broadcasting had the rights to all premier league and champions league games and it cost roughly £30 a month for their sports package. Fair enough, quality and coverage was very good. But, it was decided sky had a monopoly. So, BTs TV network were allowed to purchase some games from sky to break that monopoly. BT also then massively outbid sky on champions league games and so Sky lost that on their channels. The end result is anyone wanting to watch one of the top teams in all competitions now had 2 sport package subscriptions to buy. So cost doubled, at minimum because neither company would sell you the missing Content for a fair price unless you took their full tv/broadband package at the same time. I literally had two internet connections at one point until I saw sense and looked at other options.... And now amazon is getting some premier league games too, which you have to pay for as well. Is it any wonder folk are sick of it?

      Enjoy it while it lasts. If things keep going the way they are each team will probably start to offer subscriptions to their own games and you'll have to have the subs for both teams otherwise you can only see half the players and score.

  • "How awful that people are spamming ASCII genitals in chat", said the editors of a website where 20% of the content consists of ASCII swastikas.

  • I don't have cable TV, but I follow one particular high-profile college basketball team, and every few years I look into what it would take to get a package that would include all of their games. The answer is generally around $200 a month, because of all the bundled crap that you have to pay for. Given that there are about 8-9 games per month during the basketball season, that's insane.

    (Legal) streaming is becoming more of an option, but you're stuck paying for multiple different services and they don't

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