With several successful court orders in hand, it is now a mere formality to have a torrent site or streaming portal blocked by the High Court. And indeed, following in the footsteps of the movie and music industries the Premier League has now scored a victory in court with an order compelling six major UK ISPs to block access to the popular sports streaming site Firstrow1.eu.

The FirstRow website receives over a million visitors per day and offers streams to major sporting events, including matches of the English soccer league. The Premier League’s legal action was supported by several other sports organizations including UEFA, the PGA European Tour and the Rugby Football Union.

This week High Court Judge Arnold ruled in favor of the sports groups and ordered the Internet providers to block the IP-addresses and domain names of FirstRow. The Judge argues that while FirstRow itself doesn’t host any streams, it is responsible for the copyright infringements that occur through the site.

“FirstRow aggregates together a large number of streams from a variety of streamers, indexes them for the convenience of the user and provides a simple link for the user to click on in order to access a specific stream,” Judge Arnold wrote.

“It is true that the technical effect of clicking on the link is to direct the stream from the user-generated content site to the user’s computer, but even so the stream is presented in a frame provided by FirstRow. In all the circumstances, I consider that FirstRow is responsible for the communication.”

The order further states that FirstRow is not merely used to serve consumers, but that bars and pubs also use the unauthorized streams in their establishments.

“FirstRow is not merely used to watch coverage of sporting events in users’ homes. On the contrary, Premier League’s agents have discovered that FirstRow is being used by some public houses in the UK so as to show their customers broadcasts of Premier League matches, including during the Closed Period on a Saturday afternoon,” Judge Arnold wrote.

In a comment on the decision, the owner of FirstRow told TorrentFreak that he is saddened by the “nonsense” verdict. He notes that the site only indexes user-generated content from external sites. “What’s next?” he says.

“Our site uses third-party players, so blocking FirstRow will not stop the streams, as these will still be accessible online. They are saying that FirstRow is illegal, but our site is indexing streams that are available on the web, which is free information,” FirstRow’s owner told us.

The sports organizations argued that FirstRow makes millions of pounds through its website. The Premier League’s expert witness Dr David Price estimates that FirstRow is likely to generate between £5,360,680 and £9,505,564 in annual revenue, but FirstRow disputes this statistic.

According to the owner FirstRow makes roughly £6,000 a month, while £4,000 is spent on server costs. In addition, he believes that the site is offering a great service to the public.

“FirstRow is for people who don’t have any other way to see their team, because they are poor or simply because in their country a game is not aired on TV. Sports belong to the fans, not to the greedy corporations that increase their profits every year. The thousands of emails we receive every week confirm that.”

While FirstRow may soon be blocked in the UK, the site’s owner doesn’t believe the blocking order will be very effective.

“FirstRow will remain accessible for all other countries, and UK users can use proxies or the thousands of other websites like ours that remain open,” he told us.

Interestingly, Judge Arnold partly agrees as he states in his verdict that the blockades will be reasonably effective, but that not impossible to circumvent.

“The orders are narrow and targeted ones, and they contain safeguards in the event of any change of circumstances. While they are unlikely to be completely efficacious, since some users will be able to circumvent the technical measures which the orders require the Defendants to adopt, it is likely that they will be reasonably effective.”

And so the game of Whack-A-Mole will continue, and undoubtedly more websites will be added to the country’s unofficial ban list in the months to come.

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

Leading up to the Super Bowl this weekend, a total of 307 domain names were seized, 16 of which provided access to online streams of popular sporting events.

Commenting on the actions, ICE Director John Morton was quick to declare victory, but perhaps this came a little too soon. Firstrow, one of the largest sites which had several of its domains taken over by the US government, is not planning to give up the ‘battle’ anytime soon.

Quickly after its firstrow.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net and firstrowsports.com domains were seized, the service was operating as normal under a new domain – Firstrowsports.eu. Talking to TorrentFreak, one of the owners said that the US has stepped out of line by simply taking away their property.

“The US has prided itself on their ‘innocent before proven guilty’ mantra, yet is clearly hypocritical when it comes to this,” the Firstrow co-owner told us. “Numerous times the US has seized domains, before the defendants have been proven guilty in a court of law.”

“What is the point of trying to approve SOPA and PIPA if they do the same without these laws,” he questioned, referring to the pending US bills that would make it even easier to seize allegedly infringing domains.

The response of Firstrow stands in sharp contrast with that of ICE Director John Morton yesterday.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law,” Morton said.

This comment forms the base of the dispute. What is the law of the land? The people who operate Firstrow don’t live in the US, and neither are their servers located there. In fact, Firstrow says that their site is perfectly legal where they are based, so they will continue business as usual.

“Since we don’t live in a third-world country here, the courts decide if something is illegal not the entertainment industry lobbies. We will continue until a court decides that the site is illegal, but for now we’ve seen three court decisions on this matter that say it is not.”

Firstrow’s co-owner is referring to the court cases in Spain, where sites that merely link to copyrighted works have been declared legal. Rojadirecta, a site very similar to Firstrow, won in Spanish courts twice.

In the US, however, things work differently. Two operators of streaming sites have already been arrested and await criminal trials. And if the domains are linked to foreigners, the US believes it has the authority to take them over if they are deemed to infringe copyrights.

This stance has raised eyebrows among foreign governments. A few months ago the European Parliament adopted a resolution which criticized US domain name seizures. According to the resolution these measures need to be countered as they endanger “the integrity of the global internet and freedom of communication.”

Yesterday’s actions show that the US authorities are not impressed by the international critique, just as Firstrow refuses to change course after yet another domain seizure. Firstrow says ICE is wasting its time and continues to provide access to sports fans all across the world, who are otherwise unable to see their beloved games.

“ICE must have a lot of spare time if they can waste it on these domain seizures,” Firstrow’s co-owner says. “They should invest time in the real important stuff , instead of chasing people who have no other option than to watch a sports game for free.”

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

At the time there was no official announcement from the authorities, but ICE has now confirmed that this, their 10th round of domain seizures, is being branded ‘Operation Fake Sweep.’

In total the authorities took down a record breaking 307 domain names. The majority, 291, sold counterfeit NFL merchandise and the remaining sites allegedly linked to copyrighted streams.

The full list of seized streaming domains is firstrow.tv, xonesports.tv, firstrowsports.tv, firstrowsports.net, firstrowsports.com, hq-streams.tv, robplay.tv, soccertvlive.net, sports95.net, sports95.com, sports95.org, sportswwe.net, sportswwe.tv, sportswwe.com, youwwe.net and youwwe.com.

In addition to the seizures, police also arrested 28-year old Yonjo Quiroa of Comstock Park, Michigan. According to the press release Quiroa is the owner of nine of the sixteen sites, which he operated from his home.

Responding to the arrest and domain seizures, ICE Director John Morton declared victory.

“While most people are focusing on whether the Patriots or Giants will win on Sunday, we at ICE have our sights on a different type of victory: defeating the international counterfeiting rings that illegally profit off of this event, the NFL, its players and sports fans,” Morton said.

“In sports, players must abide by rules of the game, and in life, individuals must follow the laws of the land. Our message is simple: abiding by intellectual property rights laws is not optional; it’s the law.”

NFL’s Vice President of Legal Affairs Anastasia Danias welcomed the support of the authorities.

“We are grateful for Homeland Security Investigations’ tireless efforts in combating intellectual property theft and are pleased to be working along with them and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on this important issue,” he said.

The controversial seizures which started early 2010 have now resulted in the takeover of 669 domain names. The majority of the sites in question offered counterfeit goods and three dozen were linked to copyright infringements. One domain name has been returned because it was seized by mistake.

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

Thus far, neither the Department of Justice nor Homeland Security’s ICE unit have officially commented on the seizures, but it can’t be a coincidence that sports streaming sites are being targeted a few days before the Super Bowl is due to be aired.

The targets of today’s seizure round include Firstrowsports.tv, Firstrowsports.com, Firstrowsports.net and Soccertvlive.net, but more may be added in the coming hours (see update below). The former apparently remains operational via Firstrowsports.eu.

For the first time, seized domains also include the .TV extension as Firstrowsports.tv is now displaying the familiar seizure banner. The .TV domain belongs to islands of Tuvalu, but is operated by the US-based company Verisign.

Last year there was a similar round of domain seizures during the lead up to the largest American sports broadcast. At the time the feds seized a dozen domains including Firstrow.net and Atdhe.net.

Both sites continued to operate under different domain names, several of which have been taken down today.

The seizures in 2011 also targeted domains linked to the website Rojadirecta, owned by the Spanish company Puerto 80. Despite being declared legal by two courts in Spain, the US authorities ruled that Rojadirecta was a criminal operation. The company has been fighting in US courts to get the decision overturned, but so far without luck.

Another target during the seizures last year was ChannelSurfing.net, which was operated by the Texan Brian McCarthy. The 32-year-old McCarthy was later taken into custody on suspicion of criminal copyright infringement, and he is currently awaiting his trial.

The extent of the fallout of the new “Super Bowl Crackdown” will become apparent in the coming days. It will, however, once again fuel the censorship debate which exploded last month with the SOPA/PIPA protests and the MegaUpload shutdown.

Update: ICE statement and arrest.

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