Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

bandaancha.eu

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

181–190 of 482 posts

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#181

Post by lostlogin »

tokai wrote: post #41
nradov wrote: post #26

It's always hilarious to see HN users claim how the "quality of life" is so much better in the EU than the USA. When in reality most of them only ever visit a handful of EU first-tier cities for short vacations or business trips, and never have to deal with the reality of living and working under an oppressive bureaucratic state.

In other news NY is working on banning air guns that are not transparent or brightly colored and have plugged barrels. Yes plugged, making them useless. Which oppressive bureaucratic state are we talking about again?

You’ll take my air gun out my cold dead hands?

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#182

Post by buzer »

0x_rs wrote: post #42

Seems obvious at this point there needs to be EU-level regulations against individual countries, such as Spain and Italy, implementing these absurd restrictions. It would at least make lobbying from those sports companies more difficult. These same companies have been pushing for banning VPNs -- consumer VPNs -- as they easily circumvent half the internet going dark because of some dumb sports event, and they're goin…

> Seems obvious at this point there needs to be EU-level regulations against individual countries, such as Spain and Italy, implementing these absurd restrictions.

I don't think there is EU-level "regulation" in this specific thing. However there is something somewhat better: European Convention on Human Rights. It's just that challenging these kind of bans via that route is very slow (similar how slow it is to challenge the laws which go against the Constitution in the US via Supreme Court).

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#184

Post by torben-friis »

llbbdd wrote: post #105
torben-friis wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Football in Spain is usually sold by what used to be cable tv (now a mix of cable + Netflix-like streaming). Usually to get access to matches you need the most expensive package, which includes a bajillion services and might even be tied to a cell/internet provider. Footbal is their "killer feature" that enables 200 euro subscriptions. They also sell "business access", so pubs can show the match, since going to the b…

This makes sense and the structure is similar to how sports packages are sold on US tv providers. It's getting somewhat better with more sports being streamed on big providers like Amazon but you more or less still have to pay out the ass and have to deal with local/national market exclusivity deals that make certain games unavailable. I guess the question I'd have then is the economics of the pirate providers; I'm a…

>Do they charge some nominal amount for access so that people who aren't willing to pay the full 200 euros for the top-tier official package can get just the sports games a la carte?

Not usually, it's more like a 90's porn website setup, where you're going to click in a ton of fake links and close popups for a while until you reach a 720p stream.

Think that it's usually a bunch of very temporary services that popup and are taken down quickly, as well as a bunch of not-technically-pirate-themselves hubs that link to the former. There's not enough stability to set up payments, which are also traceable.

Anti piracy measures are crazy though. La liga has gone as far as to listen in microphones on user's apps in the hopes of catching hidden audio tones that, crossed with geolocation, allow them to detect streaming spots.

It's like gamers with anti cheat, a situation where the measures are both technically impressive and absurd overreach in a legal/moral sense.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#185

Post by bluecalm »

isodev wrote: post #110
vaylian wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. The chat control 2.0 law includes blocking orders. And Ursula von der Leyen tried to introduce internet censorship when she was still in German politics.

You’re forgetting the EU is composed of people elected and appointed by member countries. If you don’t like certain policies - contact your MEPs and express your views. Also go vote during your next election. It’s called a democracy for a reason.

You don't have "your MEP" in most EU countries. They don't care about you because their loyalty is to the party, not the voter. They need to be with good standing with the party to even get on the list.

There are so many indirections in that "democracy" that it's no longer a democracy at all. You don't get to vote on issues, you don't get to vote on people (they are just a proxy for a party). You just get to vote on 2-3 reasonable parties (if even that). There is nothing you can do in that system about a specific issue.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#186

Post by opengrass »

bix6 wrote: post #174
opengrass wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$100 is unheard of in Europe.

Netflix, Disney, HBO, Amazon, Apple, Movistar, DAZN. $100/mo estimate for that combo in Spain.

I see, we're talking combos now. The lowest end Moviestar package with soccer is 9 Euro.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#187

Post by nish__ »

llbbdd wrote: post #30

Assuming that "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" is still the prevailing wisdom, what is Spain / La Liga doing wrong that sports piracy is so prevalent as to warrant this? It seems like a no-brainer to expand stream availability and charge appropriately for it vs. scheduling daily kneecaps of other economic activity.

They don't stream on YouTube.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#188

Post by lxgr »

em-bee wrote: post #83
petcat wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> there need to be EU-level regulations against individual countries, such as Spain and Italy, implementing these absurd restrictions Why should other EU members care what websites Spain allows their citizens to access? Does the "EU" even have authority for such a thing?

if it interferes with my ability to sell products and services in spain because my website gets blocked as a side-effect, then yes, the EU should care. for example geo-blocking within the EU is also illegal. if you offer a service or product in any EU country, then anyone in the EU must be allowed to buy it. among other things this also means that if there is any country in the EU where these sports broadcasts are ac…

> if it interferes with my ability to sell products and services in spain because my website gets blocked as a side-effect, then yes, the EU should care.

As long as you’re not disadvantaged compared to a Spanish seller of goods or services or Spain’s law is specifically violating an EU one, I don’t think so.

> for example geo-blocking within the EU is also illegal. if you offer a service or product in any EU country, then anyone in the EU must be allowed to buy it.

Definitely not. You’re not automatically obliged to sell to other EU countries just because you’re selling in one. There are some categories where you have to, but that explicitly excludes video streaming.

There is another regulation for subscribers temporarily traveling to a different EU country not losing access to a service they subscribed to in their home country, but that’s also something else.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#189

Post by themafia »

Retr0id wrote: post #118
themafia wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The pirates still exist. The legitimate users are punished. Might as well abandon the law.

DRM is effective(ish) because of both technical and legal mechanisms. Without the legal mechanisms they'd ramp up the technical ones, which might end up even worse for legitimate users.

DRM is completely ineffective. It simply increases the cost of "piracy," as well as legitimate actions like home backup, to about $200 USD.

The worse they make it for legitimate users the more likely they are to just buy the necessary device and move on. The technical battle is not some limitless option that IP owners get to use, it eventually impinges on their core interests.

Re: Spain to expand internet blocks to tennis, golf, movies broadcasting times

#190

Post by nradov »

alt227 wrote: post #164
raincole wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> "piracy is a service problem, not a pricing problem" I never buy into this. If copyright law doesn't exist, pirate sites will eventually always provide better service than the official channels. One example is scanlation manga. Chinese scanlation sites have reached the theoretical ceiling of service: just serve images fast with a little nonintrusive ad. No login required. No way the official Japanese apps can provi…

When Spotify came along, music piracy all but vanished. It has already been proven in other media, it needs to happen with sports and streaming in general, then media piracy will be a thing of the past.

Perhaps, but I don't think the sports leagues and other video content providers will ever agree to letting their IP be devalued that way. They see what happened to musicians and record labels with Spotify as a cautionary tale, not a model to emulate.

Otoh, maybe Netflix and other streaming video services will start their own sports leagues in order to vertically integrate and own everything end-to-end just like what they did with TV and movie production. It would be tough and expensive but maybe not impossible?

Post reply on HN