Telefónica has won two new lawsuits in the field of piracy of audiovisual content linked to its television platform. Under one of these rulings, the operator may ask other telecoms to block pirate websites, which must be done within a maximum period of three hours from the notification of a new listing.
Thus, LaLiga and Movistar Plus+ have won a joint lawsuit filed by both entities before the Mercantile Court number 19 of Barcelona, which enables them to weekly block access to domains that facilitate content piracy of the main football tournament in Spain .
According to the plaintiffs, this protection measure is necessary since “numerous cases of digital piracy that flagrantly affect the exploitation of their rights” have been detected, through the use of “different models of piracy of audiovisual content on the Internet, especially of content sports”, as detailed in the judgment dated July 25, 2022.
The judicially authorized measure is called “dynamic blocking” since it will not be applied in a timely manner, but weekly with the new identifications of URLs, domains and IP addresses, without the need to notify the court in advance. The sentence will be in force until the 2024/2025 season and will begin its operation from the week of August 8, before the start of LaLiga football, on August 12.
This judicial mandate is in line with two other previous ones, the one established on February 11, 2020, by the Mercantile Court number 7 of Madrid, and the one of December 21, 2021, by the Mercantile Court number 6 of Barcelona, that enabled a similar protection mechanism. According to the operator, this advances in the consolidation of a jurisprudence that reinforces the legal tools to combat piracy with respect to the sustainability of the exploitation of LaLiga content.
Football is a key content for Telefónica in which it commits a strong investment every year. Only in LaLiga, the annual bill is around 800 million euros.
On the other hand, Movistar Plus+ has won another similar sentence, so that Internet access telecommunications operators in Spain will have to weekly block access to domains that facilitate the piracy of audiovisual content on this television platform.
This has been agreed by the magistrate of the Mercantile Court number 6 of Barcelona in the sentence of July 27, 2022, with the purpose of “getting the blocking of those web pages through which they would be infringing the rights of intellectual property ”.
Validity
In the sentence, which is also valid for three seasons, until the end of the soccer championships of the 2024-2025 season, it is also indicated that the blocking must be carried out within a maximum period of three hours from the notification of the new list that It is not necessary to file via court.
In this way, all the contents of Movistar Plus+, among others, channels such as #0 and #Vamos; originals like Rapa, La Unidad, La Fortuna, Hierro, El Embarcadero, La Peste and While the war lasts; programs like La Resistencia and Illustrious Ignorants; Movistar LaLiga, UEFA Champions and Europa League, will be protected by the judicially enabled weekly pirate domain blocking mechanism, in addition to the content of the OTTs with which Movistar has agreements, such as DAZN, Netflix, Disney+, Prime Video, ATRESplayer Premium, Mitele, LaLiga Sports.
This judgment of the Mercantile Court number 6 of Barcelona is also in line with the aforementioned resolution of February 11, 2020, of the Mercantile Court number 7 of Madrid, which enabled a similar protection mechanism, consolidating this jurisprudence to combat piracy.
According to the data collected by the Observatory of piracy and digital content consumption habits 2020, prepared by the independent consulting firm GfK, in 2020 there were 5,239 million illegal accesses to content worth 30,892 million euros, with a loss to the sector of 2,416 million. Eight out of ten consumers consider that the most effective measure against piracy is to block access to websites with illegal content. A scenario without piracy would create 130,318 direct and indirect jobs.
Other commercial novelties of LaLiga
Bares. Yesterday LaLiga announced various improvements to its television product for bars in Spain, LaLigaTV Bar, where in addition to LaLiga Santander and LaLiga Smartbank, UEFA competitions and DAZN Bar content can be seen on Movistar, Orange, Agile, Mediapro and Avatel . Mahou San Miguel is added to this new impulse given its ability to reach the Spanish hospitality industry.
China. In addition, LaLiga and the media and technology company Streamline will develop the LaLiga Plus application for the broadcast of LaLiga Santander and LaLiga SmartBank in China from the following 2022/23 season. “LaLiga Plus, the new application presented by LaLiga and Streamline, will connect Chinese fans with LaLiga Santander and LaLiga Smartbank starting this season. Is app will offer different packages to fans through a model freemium which will combine free and paid matches”, explained the competition.
Contents. with this new app You will be able to see the 380 matches of LaLiga Santander and, for the first time in China, the 462 matches and the promotion play-offs of LaLiga Smartbank.
