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Piracy The Courts

Court Orders SportsBay To Pay Almost Half a Billion Dollars For Violating DMCA (torrentfreak.com) 38

An anonymous reader quotes a report from TorrentFreak: In the summer of 2021, DISH Network and Sling filed a copyright lawsuit against four unlicensed sports streaming sites, among them the popular SportsBay.org. After the plaintiffs named two alleged operators of the sites, this week a court in Texas held the pair liable for almost 2.5 million violations of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions and almost half a billion dollars in damages. [...] The complaint alleged that the unknown defendants circumvented (and provided technologies and services that circumvented) security measures employed by Sling and thereby provided "DISH's television programming" to users of their websites. The plaintiffs requested a permanent injunction, control of the defendants' domains, and damages of up to $2,500 for each violation of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions.

According to DISH's first amended complaint filed in January 2022, information obtained from the third-party service providers enabled the company to identify two men responsible for operating the SportsBay sites. Juan Barcan, an individual residing in Buenos Aires, Argentina, used his PayPal account to make payments to Namecheap and GitHub. Juan Nahuel Pereyra, also of Buenos Aires, used his PayPal account to make payments to Namecheap. On January 20, 2022, DISH sent a request to the Argentine Central Authority to serve Barcan and Pereyra under the Hague Convention. On October 31, 2022, the Central Authority informed DISH that Pereyra was served in Buenos Aires on September 14, 2022. Barcan was not served so after obtaining permission from the court, DISH served Barcan via a Gmail address used to make payments to Namecheap for the Sportsbay.org, Live-nba.stream, and Freefeds.com domain names. When the defendants failed to appear, DISH sought default judgment. [...]

In his order (PDF) handed down yesterday, District Judge Charles Eskridge entered a default judgment against Juan Barcan and Juan Nahuel Pereyra for violations of the DMCA's anti-circumvention provisions. The defendants and anyone acting in concert with them are permanently enjoined from circumventing any technological protection measure that controls access to Sling or DISH programming, including through the use of websites or any similar internet streaming service. Then comes the award for damages. "Plaintiffs are awarded $493,850,000 in statutory damages against Defendants, jointly and severally, for Defendants' 2,469,250 violations of section 1201(a)(2) of the DMCA," the order reads.

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Court Orders SportsBay To Pay Almost Half a Billion Dollars For Violating DMCA

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  • by Sakuta ( 7459770 ) on Tuesday August 15, 2023 @07:19PM (#63770738)

    They will never receive a cent anyway. Absurd awards just bring shame on the court.

    • They will never receive a cent anyway. Absurd awards just bring shame on the court.

      Clearly there should be a bulk discount on torts.

      While we are at it, how about a 2-for-1 sale on criming?

  • And I will use it how I wish.

  • by Bruce66423 ( 1678196 ) on Wednesday August 16, 2023 @03:48AM (#63771358)

    fun thought for the day. The constitution states:

    'To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries'

    At sports programs - or indeed pornography - useful arts? ;)

    • Well, the porn definitely has it's uses. The sports not so much. Even less so given how much of it there is while being repetitive. There's very little to be learned from it, and the only useful bit is keeping certain personality types occupied.

      At least the porn helps procreation and lowers male aggressiveness. The same cannot be said of sports. Which often does the opposite. (Especially American Football which actively encourages bodily injury and increases aggressiveness. Both in the players and the vie
  • Hey sportsball teams, here's a novel idea: LET ME PAY YOU TO STREAM YOUR CONTENT. Seriously. I'm willing to do that rather than "support" these pirate streams. I live in the Twin Cities, but I cannot pay the Twins, MLB, or Bally Sports to stream their content. My only option is a $100+/month "cable package" that includes Bally. Back when Sling carried the RSNs I was willing to pay the $50/month, accepting that there was a bunch of trash on there I didn't want. I'll be damned if I'm paying twice that for
    • by patches ( 141288 )

      Can you not sign up for Bally+ and a VPN service to stream Twins games? For that matter, you could get MLB.tv and VPN service and stream your game. You just need an IP that isn't in the Twins blackout region.

      • by Pascoea ( 968200 )
        Bally+ does not carry the Twins games, for some stupid reason. I've also tried the MLB.tv+VPN solution, but couldn't get it to work. They had some "magic" that still knew where I was, possibly billing zip code?
        • by Burdell ( 228580 )

          The reason is basically the greed of Sinclair Broadcasting.

          MLB grants each team a broadcast market, and the team then has exclusive rights to their broadcasts in that market. Each team then signs a (typically long term) contract with a broadcaster, granting the broadcaster exclusive viewing rights in the market. However, almost none of those existing contracts included direct streaming rights. So, MLB.tv can't stream the game in the market (because the team owns viewing rights and signed them to a broadcast

          • by Pascoea ( 968200 )

            the stupid reason is Sinclair greed

            I, for the most part, 100% agree. Sinclair is the bastard in this situation, but they teams themselves (and MLB) aren't completely without blame. I understand that these contracts are often 10+ years, and this particular one was signed before streaming was a big thing. That being said, contracts are re-negotiated every day. If the teams/MLB honestly wanted their fans to be able to stream games they would have figured it out by now, but they are content to just wait for Bally/Diamond/Sinclair* to finish g

  • The default judgement meant that the defendants were served and didn't even bother with the trial, so the plantiff was able to make an example out of them.

    At least in NYC, that is changing. If someone who owes a debt misses a court case because they decided not to bother when a creditor sued them, the judge can get a bench warrant for their arrest, so they don't just owe that debt, but also a contempt charge and some jail time.

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