A judicial ruling, which most telecom operators have stated they are willing to comply with, obliges companies to identify users who illicitly access or disseminate pirate content, such as, in this case, football matches, without permission to share or rights to distribute.
In this context, preliminary proceedings are actions that a plaintiff (in this case, LaLiga) requests for a future procedure with the aim of preparing a trial before filing a possible claim, that is, they are used to obtain information and delimit certain issues.
The order indicates that illicit access to LaLiga football content can be carried out through the internet and that one of the modalities is the so-called ‘cardsharing’, which uses the ‘CCCam and IKS’ protocols and with which a connection is offered pirate to other users through a legitimate subscriber card.
“It presupposes the participation in the piracy network, on the one hand, of users with conditional access to pay for satellite connection, offering them on the network for illicit profit, and, on the other, of users who acquire satellite connection equipment enabled to access original card codes without authorisation,” the document explains.
That is, the information of a legitimate card associated with a computer or a decoder that is permanently connected to the Internet is shared, providing decrypted access codes and, in turn, it is sent to other external receivers (using CCCam protocols and others) imitating the legitimate subscriber card that is subscribed to the payment service and access the encrypted signal.
In this way, LaLiga has argued that last season it identified a total of 8,747 establishments that were broadcasting pirated content through the CCam/IKS system, “which is estimated to mean losses of up to 27.7 million euro annually.”
“Therefore, there are reasonable indications that content, works or services subject to LaLiga’s audiovisual rights are being made available or disseminated directly or indirectly (…). The registered illegal activity associated with the identified IPs has been developed by mere end consumers in good faith and without the intention of obtaining economic or commercial benefits,” the document adds.
USER IDENTIFICATION
Likewise, preliminary proceedings indicate that “it is possible” that operators must also carry out the “complete identification of the users of their services who participate in the piracy scheme” described.
Thus, the order issued by the Commercial Court number 8 of Barcelona agrees that the large telecoms (Telefónica, Vodafone, Orange, MásMóvil and Digi, specifically) should give LaLiga access to the IP address – which is used to identify a device on the Internet– assigned to the user when they access the server that enabled them to share the audiovisual content illegally.
Also, the name and surname of the owner of the internet access service contract, the postal address of the line installation and billing, the identification document (NIF or NIE, for example) of the IP address information of the server that has connected, the port of the server to which it has connected, and the time of the request.
So far, Telefónica, Orange and MásMóvil have indicated that they will comply with what Justice demands of them, while Digi has not commented and Vodafone has indicated that it is ” analysing the case in detail.”
A previous accusation was also proven against LaLiga when the Spanish Data Protection Agency (AEPD) fined LaLiga with 250,000 euro for using the microphone of the mobile phones of the users of its official ‘app’ to analyse whether bars broadcast football without paying.
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