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BREAKING NEWS FROM THE STREAMING SECTOR PIRACY CRACKDOWN
There has been a recent crackdown on piracy, with the Deutsche Fußball Liga (DFL), the Spanish Football League (La Liga), NAGRA and Nordic Content Protection announcing the shutdown of an illegal IPTV streaming network based in Spain, which served over two million paying subscribers worldwide. The shutdown results from criminal complaints by some of the above- mentioned organisations to the Spanish police force. The operation was led by the Spanish National Police with the support of Europol, the law enforcement agency of the European Union. Both operation and shutdown were notable due to the sheer scale of the piracy network. Offering over 40,000 video channels and video-on-demand content, it had 50 servers located in multiple countries across Europe. Though it was based in Spain, the network operated worldwide and generated profits of up to €15m, causing huge damages. Its IPTV service was offered to resellers, allowing them to produce their own brands and illegal service as a franchise. Arrests have been made in multiple countries, with charges of crimes against intellectual property, communications fraud, money laundering and criminal organisation. “Piracy is a global problem and it’s critical for the industry as a whole to come together to fight it, share knowledge and leverage key partnerships and anti-piracy technologies to preserve high-quality content for our fans – whether it’s in sports or other types of entertainment. Together we can make a difference and alter the piracy landscape,” stated Melcior Soler, audiovisual director at La Liga.
This comes as the reins of piracy seem to be getting tightened globally, including steps taken in the Middle East. This was made evident by the Middle East’s largest media company MBC, which “extended its gratitude and appreciation” to Saudi Arabia for shutting down illegally- run websites. The Saudi Authority for Intellectual Property (SAIP) said it had shut down 231 of these websites. Although this suggests a positive move for change, the country has been hit by heavy criticism in recent years for its involvement in piracy – and in particular its involvement with the service beoutQ. BeoutQ is a piracy platform that broadcast on the Arabsat satellite operator, after a dispute prompted Saudi Arabia, UAE, Bahrain and Egypt to impose a land, sea and air blockade on Qatar in 2017. After this, all of the Qatar-based beIN Sports channels were banned and its equipment confiscated in Saudi Arabia. This coincided with Saudi authorities promoting the launch of the new sports media group.
An Al Jazeera investigation has revealed that two Saudi service providers were involved in operations carried out by beoutQ, and also discovered that beoutQ is based out of the headquarters of a media company in the al-Qirawan district of Riyadh, the Saudi capital. Saudi Arabia has denied claims that beoutQ is based in the kingdom. The investigation obtained documents that proved financial transactions between Saudi companies and the management of Arabsat took place; Saudi Arabia was placed on a Priority Watch List for two years. The report identified Saudi Arabia as one of only ten countries that failed to protect and enforce intellectual property (IP) around the world. Saudi Arabia is seeking Premier League approval for a £300m buyout of Newcastle United. About 80% of the takeover is funded by their government’s Public Investment Fund. If the WTO were to find that the Saudi government had been the backers of beoutQ, it could have serious ramifications for the Newcastle United takeover bid.
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