A court order has been issued in favour of the Football Association Premier League Ltd obligating ISPs in the UK to block all access to streaming services that are not authorised to stream live matches on grounds of copyright infringement.
For the first time in the United Kingdom, the High Court ordered internet service providers (ISPs), including Sky, Talk-talk, Virgin Media and BT to revoke any illegal access of streaming services, namely “Kodi” (via IP address), in order to stream copyrighted footage content of the Premier League.
“For the first time this will enable the Premier League to disrupt and prevent the illegal streaming of our matches via IPTV, so-called Kodi, boxes [...] The Order was granted under Section 97a of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, and further demonstrates our intellectual property rights are protected by the law,” a Premier League spokesperson said.
This is not the first crackdown on Kodi by the UK government. Earlier this week, a fine of £250,000 along with a 10-month suspended sentence was given to Malcolm Mayes, from Hartlepool, who sold “fully loaded” Kodi boxes to pubs and clubs around the kingdom to provide coverage of the Premier League and several other paid events.
The Premier League profits enormously from selling the rights to broadcasters in order to stream paid-per-view Premier League matches worldwide that can reach up to £1.7billion annually. Meanwhile, due to the rapid growth of online streaming services that have the ability to access copyrighted footage of live matches, the Football Association Premier League Ltd sought legal actions against Kodi and other online streaming servers to protect its revenue.
The Premier League spokesperson also added, ” This will enable us to target the suppliers of illegal streams to IPTV boxes, and the internet, in a proportionate and precise manner [...] We will continue working with ISPs, government and other sports content producers to protect consumers from illegitimate services that offer no recourse when services are removed, provide no parental controls and, in many instances, are provided by individuals involved in other criminal activity.”
This court order is rather different than regular copyright infringement court orders because it obliges ISPs to block online streaming websites at the time of live streaming of the Premier League. Moreover, all targeted servers are going to be reset during the Premier League season each match week to ensure that both only new servers are blocked and not old servers if they are not streaming copyrighted content. In addition, this court order is valid until the end of the 2016/2017 Premier League season.
“We are pleased the English Premier League’s application to crack down on illegal streaming has been granted [...] It’s in the interests of both consumers and everyone working in the creative industries that we all take piracy seriously [...] We’ll continue to work with rights holders, government, online market places and content creators to tackle today’s piracy and make people aware of the risks it presents and the damage it causes,” a Sky spokesperson commented.
