3 Count: Sports Streaming

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1: Showtime Sues to Stop Pirating of Mayweather-McGregor Fight

First off today, Ashley Cullins at The Hollywood Reporter Esquire reports that Showtime has filed a lawsuit against some 40 websites that it says are planning to stream unauthorized viewings of the upcoming fight between Floyd Mayweather Jr. and Conor McGregor.

According to the lawsuit, the sites are engaging in keyword stuffing and other tactics to announce their intention to stream the fight and are ranking well in Google searches for the fight.

As such, Showtime is asking the court to issue an injunction against the sites from making the fight available or transferring their domains to another registrar. Similar lawsuits were filed ahead of the fight between Flloyd Mayweather Jr. and Manny Pacquaio and those resulted in an injunction that ordered the site offline for a period of time that included the fight.

2: New Premier League Blocking Disrupts Pirate IPTV Providers

Next up today, Andy at Torrentfreak writes that a UK order that required ISPs in the country to block pirate Premiere League streams in real time has shown fruits as reports flooded in that matches on streaming sites would go dark within minutes, resulting in chaos over the weekend.

According to Torrentfreak, they are aware of at least three streaming providers who could not reach UK users while the matches were being aired. This included both the sports-related streams but also any other content that they served. For other streaming sites, nothing seemed to change at all.

Still, because of the more effective blocks, providers are saying that a VPN is an essential for UK users. However, VPNs are not easily compatible with most piracy-focused set-top boxes and, in many cases, would require a router configured to use a VPN.

3: Out of tune: Music Schools Clash with Japan’s Copyright Enforcer

Finally today, Shotaro Tani at Nikkei Asian Review reports that the Japanese Society for Rights of Authors, Composers and Publishers (JASRAC) has become the focus of controversy after it announced in February that it was begin charging music schools in the country for use of music it manages. This has resulted in a lawsuit where the schools allege that JUSRAC has no right to do so.

JUSRAC is already a controversial figure in the country. Known for aggressive tactics, it once targeted the president of Kyoto University for quoting Bob Dylan’s Blowin’ in the Wind during a commencement address. However, the organization had largely left music schools alone.

That changed in February promptimg organizations and companies that manage music schools to band together to form the Group for Protecting Music Education. That group has now filed a lawsuit against JUSRAC saying the attempt to collect from schools is improper and that JUSRAC has no right to collect fees under the law.

Suggestions

That’s it for the three count today. We will be back tomorrow with three more copyright links. If you have a link that you want to suggest a link for the column or have any proposals to make it better. Feel free to leave a comment or send me an email. I hope to hear from you.

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