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VPN providers in France ordered to block pirate sports IPTV

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

#91

Post by godelski »

MentatOnMelange wrote: post #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…

  > This is a self-inflicted problem.
I think it is a problem when markets become profit driven rather than product driven.

By this, I don't mean businesses shouldn't put substantial weight on their profits, but rather that when push comes to shove you have to ask which matters more: profit or product? You will constantly be faced with some choice of sacrificing the quality of the product in favor of higher profits or sacrificing profits in favor of the product.

Certainty we want to maximize both, but this isn't always possible.

I think part of this has come through our runaway problem with shareholders and hyper fixation on the short term. Many shareholders are happy to trade product for profit because they believe they can exit during the market lag. It is statistical arbitrage. They have no interest in the long term value of a company or product, only until the time of exit.

It's worth noting that being too focused on the short term will damage the long term sustainability. Many times you have to put off profits today for profits tomorrow. That's the same problem. But there will be significant pressure against this if people driving don't care about tomorrow.

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

#93

Post by protonfckff »

space_firmware wrote: post #8
retrodaredevil wrote: post #4

When these VPN providers comply with these court orders, do they only implement blocking at the DNS level? Couldn't you still use these VPNs, but use a DNS provider that isn't censored?

Most likely they will be forced to implement IP level firewall rules. IE: Traffic from French users is not allowed to go to . This is one of the things the local ISPs already have to do.

[dead]

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

#94

Post by Beijinger »

aunty_helen wrote: post #84
Beijinger wrote: post #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/

Interesting isn't it, everyone heres favourite vpn doesn't make the list. The one vpn that seems to tick every box that you could want, suspiciously absent.

Which one would that be? Astrill. I think Astrill is definitely one of the best. The app is top-notch, tons of international servers, works even with GFC. But it is very expensive.

mullvad vpn is double the price of AirVPN. And Astrill is double the price of mullvad vpn.

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

#95

Post by notorandit »

VPN customers should think twice before subscribing that kind of services.

VPN providers are bound to their homeland laws and can be ordered at anytime by law enforcement agencies or by judge rulings to provide whatever is needed, eavesdropping included.

Abroad VPN providers can be blocked with the same means.

So, unless you need VPN for lawful activities, you are just trying to fool around the law.

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

#96

Post by danw1979 »

MentatOnMelange wrote: post #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…

I live near Leeds and I can’t even listen to audio commentary of Leeds Utd games unless I use an analogue FM radio.

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

#97

Post by kinow »

theturtletalks wrote: post #6
kinow wrote: post #3

I believe that's similar to what was done in Spain (for quite some time). https://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2025/02/19/cloudflare-takes-... (Article from 2025, but last year it was already happening here)

La Liga has such pull in Spain, they literally cripple the internet when games are going on so people can't pirate. This is because the VPN companies refused to comply.

Yeah, I first learnwd about this when I was browsing a tech site and it wasn't working. Then found someone on Twitter explaining it was due to a soccer match happening and the link had details about what La Liga was doing.

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

#98

Post by const_cast »

Dylan16807 wrote: post #90
ranger_danger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The law can be different between humans and machines! Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't make sense, but either way the law can do it. The law doesn't have to follow first principles.

Yes, this exactly. I don't know how people keep missing this.

There's no rule anywhere saying we have to treat computer programs as if they're humans and extend them the same rights. Why would we do that? Says who?

Also, we don't do that, not with AI. We're not talking about paying AI for their labor, or giving them digital housing or something. We only care about the human rights we can extract profits from, other than that these are digital slaves.

Which, I'm fine with digital slaves. They're bits on a computer. But then we need to do that, and we can't be doing this whole "welllll they're basically people" bit we're doing with learning.

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

#99

Post by Dylan16807 »

const_cast wrote: post #98
Dylan16807 wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The law can be different between humans and machines! Sometimes it makes sense, sometimes it doesn't make sense, but either way the law can do it. The law doesn't have to follow first principles.

Yes, this exactly. I don't know how people keep missing this. There's no rule anywhere saying we have to treat computer programs as if they're humans and extend them the same rights. Why would we do that? Says who? Also, we don't do that, not with AI. We're not talking about paying AI for their labor, or giving them digital housing or something. We only care about the human rights we can extract profits from, other t…

I don't know about that slavery argument. If you had a human slave doing unpaid paintings, they would still have the full benefit of a fair use defense.

I don't think there's any "trying to have it both ways" with AI in this context. Copyright and labor laws are very different concepts.

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

#100

Post by ben_w »

hulitu wrote: post #61
ranger_danger wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> If AI training is piracy If it is not, can I install a pirated Windows or Offiice version ? (I use it to train "AI")

The Windows source code is almost certainly part of the training data given the leaks. You can use LLMs trained on that to make your own OS if you like.

For the same reason that I think it is (1) a bad idea to use an LLM to make your own OS, (2) when the AI is good enough to do that, it won't matter which OSes are or are not open-sourced, nor which OS's source code was used to train a model, as by that point the AI can make any OS for peanuts anyway — given those two points, I think the copyright holders fighting against their stuff teaching AI are missing the forest for the trees.

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