While most people watch the matches through licensed broadcasters, there is also a large group of people who resort to unauthorized sources. These so-called “pirate” streams are available through dozens of sites, including Firstrow and Rojadirecta, which generate millions of views during popular sporting events.

These broadcasts are a thorn in the side of world football association FIFA who have contacted several owners of streaming-related sites over the past few days. TorrentFreak obtained a copy of the letter from a site owner who asked to remain anonymous.

In the letter, signed by Director of Legal Affairs Marco Villiger and his colleague Jörg Vollmüller, FIFA asks the site operators to do all they can to take these streams offline. Those who refuse to do so could face criminal liability.

“Due to the nature of your service, we anticipate that a large number of users will continually use your website to create, distribute and/or link to live streams via the Internet of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM. We want to ensure that all infringing streams can be promptly identified and removed, regardless of whether they can be viewed openly or through private areas of your site,” FIFA writes.

The letter then goes on to emphasize that the site owners bear full responsibility for all unauthorized live streams, or links to live streams.

FIFA strongly recommends that site operators immediately block access to unauthorized broadcasts when these are pointed out to them. To facilitate this process the football association has included a link to the tournament schedule, further demanding that the websites in question have people available during the matches, to ensure rapid takedowns.

“As you have been provided with the specific dates and times of all matches, we thereby expect a member of your website team to be present and available to promptly perform this duty during and throughout ALL matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM,” FIFA writes.

In addition, FIFA requests a special takedown tool so their monitoring and enforcement company NetResult can remove streams whenever needed.

“Provide a service or tool whereby NetResult, FIFA’s service provider for online monitoring, will have the ability to immediately take down and remove ANY and ALL unauthorized streams of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM found on your website,” FIFA demands.

While the site owner we spoke with only received the letter two days ago, the deadline to comply with the demands ends today. Toward the end of the letter FIFA points out that those who fail to comply will face civil and criminal liability.

“Should you fail to implement either of the above by the beginning of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil^TM on June 12, your failure to comply will expose you to civil and criminal liability,” the letter states.

The FIFA letter is unique in its kind, as copyright holders generally don’t take these types of proactive measures. As far as we know this is the first time that FIFA has sent an advance warning to site owners.

While most site operators are happy to comply with takedown notices, FIFA’s demands go above and beyond the common takedown procedure. Whether this will have the desired effect has yet to be seen.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.

The site has been operating since 2005, much to the dismay of various sports organizations who own the rights to the broadcasts. In 2007 this eventually led to legal action when Rojadirecta was reported for copyright infringement by sports rights holder Audiovisual Sport.

The company, a subsidiary of Spanish communications group PRISA (which owns Canal+, SportMania, various satellite channels, radio stations and newspapers), accused Rojadirecta of facilitating copyright infringement on various sports broadcasts by providing access to them via the Internet.

Similar to BitTorrent sites, Rojadirecta doesn’t host any copyrighted material. Instead, it indexes HTTP links to sports streams that can already be found on the Internet, and also carries links to .torrent files which are hosted on other sites.

The case of Audiovisual Sport against Rojadirecta went to court last year where the Madrid District Court agreed to provisionally dismiss the complaint of the copyright holder. The Court came to this decision after the claims made by Audiovisual Sport against the sports index were undermined by expert police evidence.

The Court further stated that Rojadirecta merely offered links to software and links that enabled users to watch the events. Even though the site carried advertising, no profits were made directly from any infringement. Previously, BitTorrent sites have been declared legal in Spain for similar reasons.

Audiovisual Sport was disappointed with the decision and filed for an appeal while Rojadirecta remained online. The appeal of the case has now been concluded. The Madrid Provincial Criminal Court sided with the earlier decision of the District Court and concluded that Rojadirecta is a legal operation.

This also concludes the legal proceedings as the case can no longer be appealed. TorrentFreak caught up with the admin of Rojadirecta who is obviously very happy with the outcome now the future of his site is secured.

“Of course we are in agreement with the verdict and with most of the legal reasoning. We neither host nor broadcast any audiovisual content, we are a sports streams index,” he told us.

“We were confident from the beginning and that is why we have never removed any links to sports events since we started our services in 2005. We have never given in to the continuous legal threats by companies from countries such as the US, UK, Mexico, Argentina, Portugal, Netherlands… not even with a criminal accusation.”

Many of the site’s users have responded with relief upon hearing the good news. They can now be certain that all major sporting events (including the upcoming FIFA Soccer World Cup) will still be available at Rojadirecta.

Source: TorrentFreak, for the latest info on copyright, file-sharing and anonymous VPN services.