davieG Posted 21 June 2013 Posted 21 June 2013 The Premier League is to request a court order forcing internet service providers to block a popular football streaming website before the next season. The League wants ISPs to cut off access to FirstRow1.eu, which operates from Sweden. The BBC understands none of the ISPs plan to challenge the court order. If successful, the action will be the first non-music-related site block in the UK. The Premier League's move follows a precedent set by the BPI music industry body, which has been successful in having several piracy websites blocked in the UK, most notably the Pirate Bay. In those cases, ISPs have stood firm and insisted they would only take action if ordered to do so by the courts. The UK's major ISPs each received a letter from the Premier League outlining a possible court order, and were given a deadline of Friday to signal any intent to challenge the action. When approached by the BBC, none of the ISPs would comment specifically on the Premier League's planned action, but all reiterated that blocking of sites would not be done voluntarily. 'Conflicts of interest' The situation raises additional issues for BT, as from next season it will be a major distributor of Premier League football through its new sports TV channels. BT has paid £246m for rights to show Premier League football, while Sky paid £760m for its portion of the coverage. Sky's ISP operation has historically been seen as taking a more sympathetic stance with copyright holders requesting the blocking of sites, whereas BT has in the past taken such battles to court on behalf of the ISP industry as a whole. Jim Killock, of the Open Rights Group, said he worried that conflicted interests might lead to the blocking process becoming less transparent. "All of the major ISPs now have differing degrees of conflicts of interest," he told the BBC. "Sky, BT, Virgin and TalkTalk all supply televisions services now, so we have to expect that there will be more reluctance to be as transparent as they have been in the past." Mr Killock also expressed concern that as the process for granting court orders gets quicker, it may lead to sites being wrongly blocked out. "It's possible that very legitimate services will at some point be attacked by one of these orders. "Our main concern here is that these orders should be considered slowly, and they should be subject to much more public review." FirstRow1.eu did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.
StanSP Posted 21 June 2013 Posted 21 June 2013 Yeah, cos that's the only one out there . Plenty more about.
adam1 Posted 21 June 2013 Posted 21 June 2013 Pointless exercise. Merely blocking a website? It's not exactly difficult getting around it is it? Look at piratebay.sx What this does is draw attention to the fact that football is available for free on the internet. Anyway please read below. I have a significant interest in copyright related matters and the internet. Below is a quick write up comparing the music industry to the football industry based on commercial activites being hit by piracy. A direct comparison can be made with the music industry. Music industry go for piratebay because it is damaging sales. Premierleague go for website because it is damaging tv sales. Now gate receipts are the same as tickets sold for a live gig. TV money is the same as album/single sales. The music industry is collapsing because it is geared towards album/single sales. This approach no longer works. Sales are falling. This is partly down to change in attitudes, but mainly due to technology which allows for free music. The music industry has always had this problem, tapes allowed for easy recording of albums in the late 70s/80s. CDs allowed for easy burning 90s-00's. A lot of the popular groups are aimed at a young audience. Said audience is tech savvy - problem intensifies massively if your taget market happen to be the ones who will copy. A new approach to making money in the industry is to use the album to promote a tour. Thus income comes from tickets sold for a tour. Now football will collapse because tv money will drop because fewer people will subscribe to watch it because of technology - it iis available for free. The problem intensifies as men who are the predominant target market are a bit 'hands on' and the younger generation in particular are very tech savvy. The premier league will lose this battle like the music industry. Now what is the difference between the artist and the football club? An artist can make money and survive on the album promoting ticket sales for a live tour. The football club however cannot. Due to the stupid amounts of money being spent clubs cannot survive on mere gate receipts. Unfortunately unless there are significant changes to the financial details of player contracts/transfer fees etc this will not work......
Captain... Posted 22 June 2013 Posted 22 June 2013 Quick! Shut that stable door, the horse has bolted! ... But only shut that one, leave the other 20 stable doors open with the horses frolicking freely on that lawless expanse known as the 'internet'.
steveherbe Posted 23 June 2013 Posted 23 June 2013 These 'other sites' referred to here. Any of them suitable for viewing on a samsung galaxy note? Guess what I bought a couple of weeks ago!!! FIRSTROWSPORTS needs flash player, and thats not available for this tablet - unless anyone knows differently.
sdb Posted 23 June 2013 Posted 23 June 2013 Maybe making match day tickets and/or Sky Sports subscriptions (or even better, share footy across networks) cheaper would be a more productive exercise.
whoareyaaa Posted 23 June 2013 Posted 23 June 2013 Pointless really would take under a week to get another site back up even though there is about 20 out there already. Regarding the music Industry I think Youtube has done pretty well to damage album and single sales as I bet most people just log on there if they want to listen to music instead of actually buying the cd.
Fox in the North Posted 23 June 2013 Posted 23 June 2013 You can also convert YouTube files to mp3s for free online.
Captain... Posted 24 June 2013 Posted 24 June 2013 You can also convert YouTube files to mp3s for free online. You can hold your ghetto blaster to your laptop speakers and record youtube to a cassette tape if you really want.
yorkie1999 Posted 24 June 2013 Posted 24 June 2013 You can hold your ghetto blaster to your laptop speakers and record youtube to a cassette tape if you really want. Or a parrot!
StanSP Posted 24 June 2013 Posted 24 June 2013 You can also convert YouTube files to mp3s for free online. Quality is decreased in the conversion, though.
purpleronnie Posted 24 June 2013 Posted 24 June 2013 I find it strange that people continue bash sky for their subscription charges, I think its a great deal, tonnes of football and other sports, loads of movie channels, tonnes of other channels to satisfy anyones tastes all for less than £15 per week. Great value.
Guest MattP Posted 24 June 2013 Posted 24 June 2013 I find it strange that people continue bash sky for their subscription charges, I think its a great deal, tonnes of football and other sports, loads of movie channels, tonnes of other channels to satisfy anyones tastes all for less than £15 per week. Great value. I agree 100%. They have fcuekd football but people need to remember the days of England cricket away games being watched on teletext, boxing only being one big fight a year on ITV, no tv coverage of US Open, French or Aussie Tennis until the final and grand slam golf majors not being on. NFL and the TDF reduced to a weekly highlights package on Channel 4. It's a fantastic deal for what you get and that's not including the non sporting stuff.
Bobby Hundreds Posted 24 June 2013 Posted 24 June 2013 Alternatively watch the BBC for unrivaled sporting coverage...
Julian Joachim Jr Shabadoo Posted 24 June 2013 Posted 24 June 2013 Alternatively watch the BBC for unrivaled sporting coverage... Which these days is: - Crufts - Natalie Jackson playing footsie with Billy Davies - Crufts Behind the Scenes hosted by that thick woman who laughs a lot and did a short-lived Iceland ad campaign
LestaFox92 Posted 25 June 2013 Posted 25 June 2013 Even if this does go through they'll just put up a proxy server like piratebay absolutely pointless.
ozleicester Posted 25 June 2013 Posted 25 June 2013 Just as an aside, ive had some issues with Firstrow this week and a virus scan turned up something in a Firstrow folder on my comp?
davieG Posted 17 July 2013 Author Posted 17 July 2013 The Premier League has won a court order forcing UK internet service providers to block a popular football streaming website. FirstRow1.eu, operated from Sweden, links to various video streams showing football from around the world - a breach of copyright, the High Court ruled. It will be blocked ahead of the new season, which begins next month. It is the first time a sport-related website has been blocked in the UK. It follows a raft of site blocks put in place by the music industry, which is increasingly using ISP-level filtering to cut off access to popular sites offering free downloads illegally. However, this case marks the first time a site simply facilitating access to streaming sites - rather than hosting streams itself - has been blocked. '£10m a year' "It is absolutely imperative that content industries are afforded protection under the law if they are to continue investing in the sort of quality talent and facilities that has made them successful and of interest in the first place," a spokesman for the Premier League said. "The judgement recognises the parasitic nature of the enterprise; this was an out and out commercial operation with estimated revenues of up to £10m a year, whilst giving nothing back to the sport." FirstRow1.eu told the BBC the block would be ineffective, as it would not remove the streams from the web. "The average user is a kid or a person that doesn't have the means to see it any other way," a spokesman wrote in an email. The comments echo the sentiment of open internet campaigners who disagree with blocking, arguing that content owners should instead concentrate on providing more legal methods to access content online. Securing the rights to show Premier League football is huge business. BT Sport, a newcomer in the market, is paying £246m per season for its broadcast rights, while BSkyB is paying £760m a year.
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