Sports Broadcasters Go After Live Streaming Pirates
Written by Ernesto on April 06, 2009During recent years technology has evolved up to a point where the rebroadcasting of TV-signals in high quality can be done with a few clicks. This poses an increasing threat to broadcasters of live sporting events, who have now joined the ‘war on piracy’ by hiring BayTSP to track down illegal live streams.
Piracy comes in many flavors and it seems to leave no content publisher untouched. Today the anti-piracy watchdogs at BayTSP have announced they will help a global sports franchise and two of the largest pay-per-view event promoters to track down illegal web streams of live sporting events.
BayTSP told TorrentFreak that it will mainly target rebroadcasts of live TV-signals on popular streaming sites. Those who use their mobile phone to stream their favorite football game when they’re at the stadium are safe, at least for now. BayTSP is already offering a similar service to the movie and music industries for ‘non-live’ clips uploaded to sites like YouTube and Dailymotion.
Illegal broadcasts of live sporting events are nothing new though. The P2P based TVU Networks has been around for years, and allows users to watch and broadcast live TV signals all over the world. With the increase in popularity of services such as Ustream and Stickam the number of illegal streams is growing.
“Since 2006 we’ve seen a steady increase in piracy of sports broadcasts and pay-per-view events, primarily as a result of video streaming technology becoming easier to use,” says BayTSP CEO Mark Ishikawa. “Since broadcasters make the majority of their money from the initial broadcast, they understand the impact that signal theft can have on the bottom line.”
The name BayTSP might sound familiar to BitTorrent users, as they are also sending takedown requests on behalf of the movie and music industries. The company does so by joining BitTorrent swarms to record the alleged infringer’s IP-address and other relevant information. This information is then forwarded to the user’s ISP.
With web based streams, however, it is often impossible to identify the source directly, as their IPs are not broadcasted on the web. “In most cases, take down notices are sent to the site hosting the stream. On some occasions, notices are also sent to the ISP of the hosting site,” BayTSP told TorrentFreak.
Whether the money that the sports broadcasters pay BayTSP will make up for the lost revenue though piracy is a question that remains unanswered.
Previously: X-Men Leak Downloaded Over a Million Times
Next: Top 10 Most Pirated TV Shows on BitTorrent
47 Responses
I live in the US and watch cricket all the time with TVU, Sopcast and whatever else works because I’m not interested in paying the $80 a month that it would cost me to see it on TV.
I don’t really understand the last two paragraphs –whether they imply that I’m safe because I can’t be tracked. I would appreciate some clarification of this.
If they stream live TV. aren’t they streaming commercials also? so… who’s losing money?
BayTSP = Mega A*sholes
Still waiting for BayTSP Defenders.
who are the 3 broadcasters anyway? i’m assuming, WWE, UFC and ESPN–can someone get confirmation on that?
@rickards BayTSP has a NDA with these companies so they can’t tell who they are..
@Dennis They are not targeting the people who watch the streams (unlike with BitTorrent).
They contact the sites that offer these streams and ask them to take it down/warn the user.
So these are server streams and not P2P streams?
*jerkoff handmotion*
more futile bullshit.
stop molesting your users with ridiculous fees, and use new technology or we will do it without you.
I refuse to pay for a payperview event. Complete waste of money.
They used to complain about recording radio with a cassette and TV with a VCR. Someday, everyone will access all communications from a satellite. We will be recording that with our computers. Life goes on and the dinosaur acronyms are still in the Jurassic Era complaining they aren’t making “enough” money. Damned corporate pukes. Bottom line my ass!
those shoes were pretty gangsta :)
Perhaps if the charged more reasonable rates for PPV sporting events more people would actually purchase. A UFC event in my area costs $70+ per event. You can probably get a mediocre seat for not much more then that at the actual event.
Even though the advertizement are viewed in the “pirate”-stream, the broadcasting company actually loses money by not being able to track accurately how popular the broadcast was, and therefore they cannot charge the right amount for the advertising time for similar events in the future.
“Even though the advertizement are viewed in the ‘pirate’-stream, the broadcasting company actually loses money by not being able to track accurately how popular the broadcast was, and therefore they cannot charge the right amount for the advertising time for similar events in the future.”
Then it is more reasonable to ask those who are sending those pirate streams to report the number of viewers, rather than to take them down.
good luck in never ending cat and mouse cycle
Rights to Football in the UK is sold to 5 different broadcasters. Half of them making you pay a subscription fee to watch. Us fans are the ones who end up out of pocket so why shouldn’t we stream to watch our teams.
The really ridiculous part, in the U.S., at least, is that there’s no legitimate way to stream them anyways. I’m at a college where we don’t get cable in the dorms, and there’s virtually no broadcast signal to speak of, so unless I turn to these channels, I have no way of watching them.
Even MLB, which has a pretty good season deal, refuses to stream playoff games. And the NFL doesn’t even bother at all. Come on, guys! I WANT to give you my money!
It’s some stupid deal with ‘blackout areas,’ but the bottom line is that it’s COSTING them money.
wtf is signal theft
signal theft, hahahah wow. I cannot wait until they figure a way to charge for the air we breathe or the water we drink… oh wait…
How I see it, the days of massive mega fortunes made on telecom/media are over. Sure, you can spout out the corporate buzz words, digital copy, or pay-per-view/pay-per-stream but the future is defensively ad supported “free” media revenue. However, just like the previous posts, there are those willing to pay for it, not me, but they are some who love the game. Why not actually give it to them MLB.
They must not be doing a very good job! I love my English Premier League streams on TVU, Sopcast, etc. <3 myp2p.eu
I love those shoes!
Where can I get them?
tahanks
pundai
There’s no other way to watch Romanian soccer league than by “illegal” P2P Sopcast channels. Well, another option would be intallation of illegal satellite lol
And what about sporting events shown on ESPN360?
Not every ISP (read: pretty much everyone other than AT&T) carries this ripoff, and even then they show commercials over that feed. Which really sucks in the case of collegiate athletics.
For example, it really blows that someone on the other side of the globe can watch a college basketball game over espn360 while people in America who went to a school can’t even watch it.
For once I agree with Comcast’s approach of “the hell with that” and would rather watch a pirated broadcast of it.
Can they track you if you use tvants to watch like MLB games?
I think the real issue is that professional athletes aren’t being paid well enough … it’s really difficult to survive when you’re barely “earning” 100s of millions of dollars for merely tossing a ball around, or some other equally formidable activity which contributes sooooo significantly to the progress of mankind … heck, we must do everything in our power to make sure that these Supreme Deities and their overlords are adequately compensated … or, heaven forbid, they will no longer play sports! Oh, the horror!
LOL Sports
+1
I’ve often wondered what the hell would warrant the stupid sums of money that these meat heads make. OK so you can make a ball go into a hole, and you can do it really really well, but is this worth millions?
I paid for a PPV boxing match.
When it came on the ruskie boxer backed out of the match at the last minute.
So I was left holding the bag for this over priced rip off.
And no refund was offered after calling my provider.
Needless to say this was the last PPV event I ever bothered with.
WWE went after Justin.tv and other sites hard during Wrestlemania. Streams were being shut down due to Copyright claims left and right.
so, what about people who stream from other countries (with proxies) sites like BBC iPlayer?
safe or no?
I just want to know where you can get the shoes from the picture…
I pay for a season ticket to aston villa in EPL i go to all the home games and as many of the away games as i can but cant get to all. My reason for watchin these streams is that skysports and sultana sports choose other games which leaves me having to watch it on a channel from another country like china
Sport? lolster
Stop Steaming Pirates now!
they are much better fried.
there’s too much money in sports, and they doesn’t give anything back, it’s just old roman “bread & games” to keep you from reclaiming your freedoms
Fine, bring the streams down, but in return BROADCAST EVERYTHING IN OUR COUNTRIES!!!!!! How the hell are we suppose to follow our teams without streaming? When they’re not even broadcasted on TV here?
Greedy idiots.
All you need to do is set your stream channel to private, then create an embed through a linking site. Once that is done, the odds of having your stream shutdown drop dramatically.
ya damn where do i get those shoes.. lol
@Jonne
Shoes in the pic are “Adidas AdiFC Orlando Pirates”.
they failed at stopping the wrestle mania streams and they will fail at everything else. when one stream goes down another goes up and everyone in the room tells the other where the next stream is .
Where the hell can one order these fine shoes in europe, searched th enet and found nothing.
I guess justin.tv is gonna lose a lot of traffic. It seems like 90% of their streams are ppv sports, movies, and tv.
This insatiable greed just boggles the mind … so much revenue is generated by advertising, endorsements and the like … one would think the powers that be would stfu and gladly support ANY medium that offers FREE exposure. Fans are generally very supportive of their favorite teams, sports figures, etc. … BILLIONS are spent every year on merchandise and a whole slew of other useless items … and of course, each fan is a potential walking billboard … instead of conducting these witch hunts, the greedy bastards should show a little more appreciation to the millions of dedicated supporters who built their empires. Case closed.
Does Len Berman have anything to do with this?
No-name… you couldn’t have said it better.
hi
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