EU Study: Block Live Sports Piracy in 30 Minutes, Across DNS Resolvers, VPNs and CDNs * TorrentFreak

EU Study: Block Live Sports Piracy in 30 Minutes, Across DNS Resolvers, VPNs and CDNs

For years, rightsholders have demanded urgent and decisive action from the European Commission, to tackle live-streaming piracy of live sports and events.

The EU heard these calls and in 2023 it published a targeted recommendation, “encouraging” member states to introduce measures to facilitate prompt takedowns of live streams.

This advice was largely seen as a disappointment by rightsholders, since it was not binding. While some EU member states have increased their enforcement efforts since, with Italy’s "Piracy Shield" as the prime example, others took no notable action.

EU Study Proposes 30-minute Takedown Timer

A new study commissioned by the European Parliament’s Committee on Legal Affairs (JURI) argues that the EU-wide response, as it stands, is not strong enough.

The report, titled "Countering online piracy of sports and broadcast in the EU", is written by Professor Giovanni Maria Riccio of the University of Salerno. It recommends that the EU move from voluntary guidance to a binding Regulation that’s aimed specifically at combating live-streaming piracy.

"The current EU response to live-content piracy remains fragmented and not fully adapted to the speed and technical complexity of live broadcasts. Existing rules provide useful tools, but they do not yet ensure consistent and timely enforcement across Member States," the study concludes.

The report

The study recommends a swift takedown obligation for streaming intermediaries, requiring these to take action within a certain time limit. As an example, it mentions 30 minutes, following the example of Italy’s Piracy Shield.

This takedown requirement should not only apply to Internet providers. Other intermediaries including third-party DNS resolvers such as Google and OpenDNS, VPN providers, and CDNs such as Cloudflare, should also take action.

"It would likewise be desirable for the personal scope of application to extend to the entire chain of intermediaries technically involved in the distribution of unauthorised content – including providers of content delivery networks, VPN services, dedicated servers and DNS resolution systems," the study recommends.

The report notes that courts in Europe have already started to issue broader injunctions. This includes the Paris Judicial Court, which required DNS resolvers and VPN providers to block pirate sites.

An AGCOM in Every EU Member State

The report models a lot of its suggestions after the Italian "Piracy Shield" legislation, which has been widely criticized by opponents. This applies to the 30-minute clock and the broad range of intermediaries it covers, as well as the oversight body.

In Italy, the administrative AGCOM agency handles pirate site blocking procedures and the report suggests that all EU member states should have their own version of AGCOM.

"[I]t is advisable for each EU Member State to establish an independent administrative authority – or, where appropriate, to confer the necessary powers upon an existing one (again on the example of AGCOM) – to ensure consistent oversight, effective enforcement, and regulatory coordination," it suggests.

Blunt Tools

While the study leans heavily on the Italian model, it doesn’t pretend that blocking is a perfect fix. It openly admits that these often-used anti-piracy tools have their shortcomings.

"IP and DNS blocking remain inherently blunt instruments," the report warns, noting that they can’t reliably separate unlawful streams from legitimate services that share the same infrastructure.

That’s the overblocking problem that has plagued Piracy Shield from the start, where blocks aimed at pirate streams have taken down access to unrelated sites and services.

Curiously, the study makes part of its case using research that points the other way. For example, it cites an empirical study published by the Open Observatory of Network Interference (OONI) which found that following a LaLiga blocking order in Spain, more than 554,000 domains were blocked at least once during football match broadcasts. This included websites from Amnesty International and the ACLU, UNICEF, UNHCR, the Australian Senate, and Amazon S3 endpoints.

It also cites a report from the Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS), which TorrentFreak covered earlier this year, that called for banning IP-based blocking, while also making rightsholders liable for collateral damage.

The report references those warnings, but recommends rolling out the Piracy Shield approach across the entire Union anyway. To keep it in check, it proposes safeguards such as limiting blocks to the duration of the live event, keeping judicial or administrative oversight in place, and sticking to the proportionality standards set by the EU Court of Justice.

Fragmented and Expensive Options

Finally, the report...