Live data from Hacker News

VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

torrentfreak.com

41–50 of 103 posts

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#41
I'm not a big sports fan but I know several people who are. I don't think there's another industry on earth whose customers are so willing and eager to spend money as fans watching their teams. And there's probably no industry on earth that tries as hard to prevent people from buying their services.

The link between piracy and hypothetical profits has never been hard science, but when it comes to televized/streaming sports, a lot of this pirating seems to happen because people aren't allowed to watch it legally in their area.

This is a self-inflicted problem.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#42
post #29

How about making access to the games fairly priced and easily accessible? Streaming services have dramatically reduced piracy by making it way easier and way cheaper than ever before to consume content. I don't live in Europe, but if it is like US sports, you need to jump through hoops, pay through the nose, and have 14 different accounts to watch all the sports you want.

Not defending them or what they are doing, but if you can’t afford to watch football you always have the option of not watching it. I don’t know why this is always framed as “make it cheap or it’s right to pirate it”

This goes well beyond just an affordability issue. They’re price gouging, forcing customers into one-off subscription services that are deliberately hard to cancel and make it difficult to get a refund, even when one is clearly warranted.

They want people to pay to watch, and that’s fair. But if they make it too difficult, too expensive, or outright exploitative, they should fully expect that people will find ways to watch without paying them directly.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#43

People tend to assume workarounds will be found. They will -- no doubt. But in time, it will be as easy as installing Linux on a PS5. I just hope unverified operating systems won't be blocked on similar grounds.

You're talking about two different things. One is, you want to install Linux on your PS5. A PS5 is basically just a PC, so what are you getting out of that when you could much more easily just install Linux on a normal PC? The incentive to find a way to do it is low. Meanwhile the PS5 is manufactured by a company that doesn't want you to do it, so they make it take effort to do it. The other is, people want to watch…

> You're talking about two different things.

No, you've actually missed his point entirely.

He is alluding to the fact that over the last decade or so, consumers have unwittingly slid down the slope of "not having true control over personal electronic devices". Iphones are already there, Android devices are a few years behind, as are most desktop PCs.

Once there's critical mass, it would not be a stretch for ISPs to only deliver internet to endpoints that have a secure element that attests to the integrity of the internet-con ected device. This will of course be done under the guise of "fighting the spread of malware" and such.

Piracy effectively ends at that point.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#44
I don't like watching sports on TV but it's hilarious that the courts said that you are forbidden to go to aliezstream.pro, and that Mullvad is not on the forbidden list. You MUST NOT combine both because it's very naugthy!

Meanwhile Facebook stole all the books on the planet and it's not forbidden at all. It's very hard for me to take them seriously.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#45

I'm not a big sports fan but I know several people who are. I don't think there's another industry on earth whose customers are so willing and eager to spend money as fans watching their teams. And there's probably no industry on earth that tries as hard to prevent people from buying their services. The link between piracy and hypothetical profits has never been hard science, but when it comes to televized/streaming…

Huge swaths of Los Angeles are completely unable to watch Dodgers games on TV because of the way the cable companies have packaged and delivered the content. You know, one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world, makes total sense.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#46
People here are very fond of Mullhad VPN. I have mixed experiences with NordVPN, especially under Linux.

If you look for something cheap, AirVPN hast a sale going on: https://airvpn.org/ It works okay for me or my current needs.

https://expatcircle.com/cms/privacy/vpn-services/

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#47

How about making access to the games fairly priced and easily accessible? Streaming services have dramatically reduced piracy by making it way easier and way cheaper than ever before to consume content. I don't live in Europe, but if it is like US sports, you need to jump through hoops, pay through the nose, and have 14 different accounts to watch all the sports you want.

Also just more accessibility in terms of being able to pay for it. As a viewer in Canada, there was no service whatsoever that was showing the Real Madrid vs Barcelona Spanish cup final a few months ago (Copa del Rey). I had to signup on a Spanish state tv website and use a VPN to access it for free. I would have gladly paid, but there was no opportunity. Content fragmentation and some sports rights not being bought…

"Content fragmentation and some sports rights not being bought and resold by anyone is also a big problem."

I dont watch soccer. But if you want to watch soccer with a decent exposure (national league, Champions league etc.) in some EU countries you pay easily 100 Euros. And for Europe, this is a lot!

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#48

I'm not a big sports fan but I know several people who are. I don't think there's another industry on earth whose customers are so willing and eager to spend money as fans watching their teams. And there's probably no industry on earth that tries as hard to prevent people from buying their services. The link between piracy and hypothetical profits has never been hard science, but when it comes to televized/streaming…

Huge swaths of Los Angeles are completely unable to watch Dodgers games on TV because of the way the cable companies have packaged and delivered the content. You know, one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world, makes total sense.

What do you mean, the cable companies block Dodger games from being on cable? That doesn't make sense.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#49
post #12

Really great that European courts have created all the legal tools for authoritarian control of the internet in the future, to prevent the scourge of watching sports streaming without paying. Before this, it was much easier for ISPs / DNS providers / VPN providers to push back against governments wanting to censor the internet because the companies wouldn't have the tools installed to do this kind of blocking. The co…

Copyright law has always been the most powerful force on the Internet. Which is why its collision with AI companies who pirate the whole Internet is very interesting.

If AI training is piracy then all art made by humans is also piracy... we cannot create anything without drawing inspiration from something else.

The question is exactly how much is copied, and how obvious it is.

Re: VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

#50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're talking about two different things. One is, you want to install Linux on your PS5. A PS5 is basically just a PC, so what are you getting out of that when you could much more easily just install Linux on a normal PC? The incentive to find a way to do it is low. Meanwhile the PS5 is manufactured by a company that doesn't want you to do it, so they make it take effort to do it. The other is, people want to watch…

> You're talking about two different things. No, you've actually missed his point entirely. He is alluding to the fact that over the last decade or so, consumers have unwittingly slid down the slope of "not having true control over personal electronic devices". Iphones are already there, Android devices are a few years behind, as are most desktop PCs. Once there's critical mass, it would not be a stretch for ISPs to…

iPhones have always been able to access web pages. Web pages run on general purpose computers, and basically have to, because they're made of site-specific content and site-specific code. To get rid of "piracy" you would not only need to prevent users from having access to their own phones, you would need to make it impossible for anybody to have their own web page.

That level of dystopia is the sort of thing that could never last very long because enough people would rather burn it to the ground while still inside of it than allow it to continue to exist.

Post reply on HN