TV operator goes to court to bar World Cup games on pirated IPTV – APK Games

THE FIFA World Cup 2022 starts in November, but some media companies are already worried about pirated broadcasts of the games. One of them is Bell Media. Anticipating the problem, the company opened a lawsuit to bar two IPTV services in Canada with a history of broadcasting major sporting events illegally.

Bell Media is a media conglomerate based in Canada. The company has a sports channel called The Sports Network (TSN) that holds the rights to broadcast World Cup games via streaming.

As they operate illegally, the two IPTV services covered in the lawsuit do not have official names. But one is known to have servers in the British Virgin Islands, Russia and the UK. These are operated by providers based in the Virgin Islands and Ukraine.

The second has servers located in Belize (a country that borders Guatemala) that are operated by a provider in the same country.

Both services stream television content through various websites and link aggregators to sports broadcasts. It is for this reason that it is not easy to block these addresses. A site can even be taken down, but others appear to continue with pirated streaming.

According to TorrentFreak, Bell Media is not alone in its attempt to stop pirated IPTV services from broadcasting World Cup games. CTV Specialty Television and Réseau des Sports are also part of the process.

What do these companies want?

As has already become clear, taking down sites that provide the content of illegal IPTV services is difficult. That’s why the aforementioned media companies went to the Federal Court of Montreal to ask for an injunction that obliges internet providers to block access to illegal servers.

Such companies also want to be compensated for illegal IPTV services. But again, it’s hard to find them. That’s why the focus is on the lock request. To this end, the IP companies provided the Canadian authorities with a list of IPs linked to the pirated servers.

Not that this type of action is new. O TorrentFreak explains that the Canadian judiciary approved the first order to block pirated addresses four years ago. At the time, most providers blocked it without question.

Most, not all. ISP TekSavvy valiantly resisted the order, arguing that the blockage threatened the open internet. At the time, Andy Kaplan-Myrth, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, stated that the injunction would lead to more blocking requests in the future.

Apparently, Kaplan-Myrth was right in his prediction.

It is clear that the injunction, if issued, will have no impact on Brazil. But as the country is among those that most consume content through illegal IPTV services, it is good to keep an eye on this movement.

It won’t be surprising if TV channels or organizations linked to media groups around here also anticipate events and ask for blocking of IPs linked to pirated streaming services.