A segment of the online sports fan community mourned Monday as two popular websites known for pirating illegal streams of live sporting events displayed a message—ostensibly from their anonymous owner—that they would be “taking a break from live streaming.”
Visitors to sites called Methstreams and Crackstreams were instead encouraged to join an existing Discord community for further updates. In a sign of the sites’ following, more than 80,000 accounts were part of the Discord group—which has been around at least since 2022—as of Monday afternoon.
Methstreams previously earned attention in November, when ESPN’s Adam Schefter reposted a clip of NFL action that had originated on the site (he’d grabbed the video from another poster, rather than from the now-defunct service).
Two weeks ago, the Methstreams owner told Discord members that one of their domain names had been locked amid the ongoing battle between rightsholders and those circumventing distribution deals. Around the same time, anti-piracy organization The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE) announced that it had helped shut down hundreds of websites, many based in Vietnam, that had attracted more than 800 million visits in the past year. A representative for ACE didn’t respond to a request for comment about whether those domains were part of its crackdown.
Media companies pay billions for exclusive rights to broadcast live sports, and advertisers in turn pay billions to reach the fans that are watching. The NFL’s current media deals, for example, are worth more than $125 billion; the NBA‘s most recent round is worth $77 billion. The illicit streams often come via foreign feeds, meaning the broadcasts (and the ads) are frequently not intended for U.S. audiences. In severe cases, that lost revenue could threaten the solvency of sports organizers and the events they put on.
A report from piracy-tracking firm VFT estimated that 17 million people watched the 2024 Super Bowl on illegally distributed streams.
Although Methstreams and Crackstreams have not explained why they have been taken down, a plausible reason is they are accused of copyright infringement of live sports streams and that online service providers (OSPs) have acted in accordance with their legal obligations to order takedowns.
American pro sports leagues are armed with limited tools to combat illegal streaming, which, as the Harvard Business Review recently noted, costs the global sports industry about $28 billion in annual revenue. The Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) is the key federal statute to combat privacy. However, it is from 1998, a time when many people accessed the Internet through dial-up modems and live streaming was not available.
DMCA, leagues have argued, is too slow-moving in that it features a notice and takedown process that is ill-suited for live sports streaming. The gist of the process entails the content creator notifying an OSP (such as YouTube or Facebook) that it is running an illegal stream. The OSP is then obligated to investigate and, if necessary, act, but hours or days can pass before a stream is removed.
With live sports content, action is arguably needed within seconds, or at least minutes, since the value of the content diminishes as time passes. UFC, as well as the NBA and NFL, have urged lawmakers and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office to consider measures that would obligate OSPs to act quicker and to engage in more sophisticated verification measures before permitting a user to livestream.
Blocking access to feeds distributed from overseas can be even more difficult, and often requires intervention from the internet service providers hosting or distributing said content.
A recent study in France found that more than half of the viewers for a Ligue 1 match accessed the game via illegal means. Outgoing Professional Football League Media CEO Ben Morel described piracy reaching a “dangerous tipping point” moment for the sport. France’s laws allow rightsholders to demand tech companies engage in measures to prevent serious violations of their broadcasting rights.
When Google was instructed to participate in one such push last summer, it reportedly expressed an intention to comply while pointing out that the effort’s impact would likely be negligible. Worldwide, visits to unlicensed global video sites have risen 12% since 2019 despite attempts to slow their spread, according to anti-piracy analysis platform Muso. Unlicensed sites can profit from signing their own advertising deals or collecting valuable visitor data. Some services have also attempted to charge subscribers for access to private portals.
It remains unclear whether enforcement or another motivation triggered Monday’s announcement, as the Methstreams and Crackstreams owner also teased news of a return.
While many users of the websites publicly saluted the operator for the service they provided, it wasn’t long before commenters pivoted to discussing which remaining site offered the best way to continue watching unlicensed game streams.
Source: sportico.com
