He anti-piracy shield which is used in the European Union to block pirated IPTV lists and free football, is an abusive measure that violates privacy and the Digital Services Act (DSA). This is what the Computer and Communications Industry Association (CCIA)whose members include Google, Amazon, and Cloudflare.
Italy launched a few months ago what it called the Anti-Piracy Shield, which is basically a blocking of IP addresses and DNS of the IPTV lists that pirate football and offer free soccer. In Spain and other countries, LaLiga and other associations are trying to implement similar measures.
Far from being effective, this shield has blocked legal IP addresses of thousands of users, and has left all Italian Google Drive users without service for hoursamong other problems.
Technology companies ask to ban the football anti-piracy shield
Furthermore, Italian law has gone further, by oblige ISPs to report any minor infringement of users’ copyrightor else face prison sentences.
This protection measure has only been liked by the owners of football rights, LaLiga and equivalents. The problems it causes for many people who don’t even watch football are abundant.
To begin with, ISPs have to dedicate technical and human resources and become the police of their own clientsby having to track what they do. In addition, there are already numerous failures of this Anti-Piracy Shield, which has blocked legal websites and users and, most seriously, Google Drive.
Last October 20, Google Drive was mistakenly blocked by the system Piracy Shield, causing a three-hour blackout for all Italian users, while 13.5% of users were still blocked at the IP level, and 3% at the DNS level after 12 hours.
Google Drive is a tool that is widely used at a professional and educational level, and the fact that the service is down for up to 12 hours for all users is too great a detriment, just for a private company to stop making money for some subscriptions.
The CCIA has sent a letter to the European Commission, where calls into question the legality of the measure. He criticizes that the Anti-Piracy Shield was developed by a company affiliated with the Italian league, which raises questions about whether the system takes into account the interests of all parties.
The letter criticizes that he Piracy Shield attacks privacy, freedom of expression and online innovation. In his opinion, it clearly violates the Digital Services Law.
Finally, he accuses the pirate football shield of bypass European Union controlsat the time of approval. It has not passed the TRIS procedure, which requires this type of measure to undergo a review by the European Commission to see if it complies with the laws.
«The Italian Government should withdraw the aforementioned legislation to subject it to the TRIS procedure, which would allow the Commission and other Member States to review the substance of these flawed and ineffective initiatives and address their infringement of European law,» states the letter, which you can read in full on TorrentFreak.
We will see to what extent the European Commission takes action, and if it really reviews Anti-Piracy Shield, which tech companies consider illegal. It might be a relief for pirated IPTV lists, but one way or another, their chase is not going to end. At the end of the day, they are pirating, and that is unacceptable even for those of us who find this Anti-Piracy Shield to be an abusive and absurd measure.
Get to know how we work in NoticiasVE.
Tags: European Union, Privacy, Viral, IPTV, Cybersecurity, football