Stopping pirated live streams is one of the main priorities, but there is another concern. In all the excitement many social media users have added World Cup related logos and other pictures as their avatars, something that’s strictly forbidden by FIFA.

The football organization fears that use of their logos and emblems by others may cause serious damage. FIFA believes that this endangers the entire worldwide football community.

“Any unauthorized use of the Official Marks not only undermines the integrity of the FIFA World Cup™ and its marketing programme, but also puts the interests of the worldwide football community at stake,” FIFA says in an official statement.

Social media is particularly worrisome because the official logos may lead followers to believe that the user is somehow related to FIFA.

“FIFA’s official logos, symbols and other graphic trade marks may not be used on any social media platform. FIFA’s Protected Terms may not be used to create the impression that a page is officially related to the 2014 FIFA World Cup,” FIFA notes.

Considering the above FIFA sees no other option than to crackdown on Twitter users with official FIFA logos and images as avatars. In recent weeks Twitter has been asked to take action against several of its users, by removing their infringing profile pictures.

The requests were made for a wide variety of images including the World Cup emblem, logo and even the trophy. Twitter appears to have honored the requests and has replaced the infringing avatars with the default egg.

Most of the targeted accounts seem to be specifically related to football. However FIFA has also asked Twitter to remove the profile picture of @afobajee, a relatively random user.

Most of the affected users have changed their profile pictures to something non-infringing. However, others appear to have simply switched back to using official FIFA material.

We expect that FIFA still has their eye on the ball, so these infringing profile pictures probably won’t stay online for very long.

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

These so-called “pirate” streams are available through dozens of sites, including Firstrow and Rojadirecta, which generate a lot of traffic during popular sporting events.

Before the World Cup started FIFA reached out to several of these sites, asking their operators to make sure that content is removed as soon as possible. Despite these requests, there are still plenty of illegal streams available for each game.

Content protection firm Viaccess-Orca, one of the companies that monitors these unauthorized broadcasts, is also tasked with sending takedown notices for some of the matches. The company informs TorrentFreak that up to last Friday they have sent 2,000 takedown notices to various sites.

One of the problems with live events is that takedown requests only have an effect when they are processed before the match ends. According to David Leporini, Viaccess-Orca Executive Vice President of Marketing, Products and Security, the linking sites have been rather cooperative on this front.

“The success rate varies per content platform but overall we manage to get 35 percent of the streaming links disabled before the game ends. I think this is a great success rate, especially compared to direct download sites,” Leporini informs us.

A success rate of 35% is pretty decent indeed, considering that the notices have to be sent and processed in a very small time frame. Also, the process is further complicated because many sites don’t publish the links to the streams until a few minutes before the game starts.

The content protection company also targets traditional social media sites where links to live streams are posted. Here, the success rate was the best at Facebook where half of all infringing links were taken down before the game ended.

“For the first ten days we have sent around 150 takedown notices to Facebook and Twitter pages. Among all content platforms notified, we measured a success rate of about 51% for link removals from Facebook pages.”

While Viaccess-Orca’s efforts may limit the availability of pirated live streams, there are still hundreds of thousands of people getting through. The company estimates that between 100,000 and 500,000 people tune in to an average game. Up until last week, Belgium versus Russia was the most-watched match with 471,541 unauthorized viewers.

Viaccess-Orca can measure part of the audience directly though P2P streaming services such as Sopcast and Acestream. This also allows the company to see from what location people are watching. As the overview above shows, Belgium vs. Russia was particularly popular in Europe and Asia.

The remainder of the streams go through centralized streaming services, with Hdcast and Iguide being the most frequently used. Rojadirecta and Wiziwig are the sites where Viaccess-Orca found the most infringing links.

Looking ahead, the content protection firm expects that the number of viewers per match will continue to increase, as will the enforcement actions.

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

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.