What began as a controversy associated with LaLiga matches has just taken a much bigger leap. The blockages that we have been seeing for months on football days no longer stop there: they also reach other live sports broadcasts and expand the radius of a measure that was already generating discomfort and complaints.
The novelty. According to El Economistathe latter is based on a resolution of the Commercial Section of the Court of Instance of Barcelona in response to a lawsuit from Telefónica Audiovisual Digital. That resolution, dated March 23, authorizes Movistar Plus+ to request the rest of the Spanish telecommunications operators to collaborate in the dynamic blocking of websites that illicitly disseminate content over which Telefónica has rights. Always according to the information published, the measure will begin to be applied this Tuesday with The Champions League match between Atlético de Madrid and Barcelonaand will continue the next day with the meeting between Bayern Munich and Real Madrid.
What changes in practice. From here on, the matter stops being just a judicial decision and becomes a concrete operation. As we have seen, and according to the aforementioned source, it will be the operators who must collaborate with Telefónica in the immediate blocking, during the broadcast of the content, of IP addresses, URLs and domain names used for illicit dissemination. The information also places Movistar and O2, as well as MasOrange, Vodafone and Digi operators, within this framework.
The scope. The key is not only in who executes these blocks, but in the type of emissions that now come into focus. If before the public conversation tended to revolve around LaLiga, the new information paints a much broader scenario: the authorization refers to “every day of broadcasting of live sporting events” and covers not only the Champions League, but also tennis or golf competitions over which Telefónica has rights. This obviously widens the playing field.
Damage to third parties. The controversy around these blockades arises not only from their harshness against illicit emissions, but from what we already saw months ago in services completely unrelated to that circuit. As we published in Aprilseveral companies described traffic and revenue drops in the context of IP blocks that also affected legitimate services. Among the cases that we collected was that of OnlyTenis.com, whose manager placed the monthly billing at a drop from around 70,000 euros to a range of between 40,000 and 50,000 euros.
The expansion. In that context, what we have before us is a clear extension of a strategy that is not completely new. The difference is that now the focus is broadening and, with it, so is a discussion that has been open for some time in Spain. On the one hand, there is the will to stop the illicit dissemination of content with faster and more forceful measures. On the other hand, the same underlying question continues to linger: to what extent this tightening can once again affect users, services and companies that are not part of that circuit.
Images | LaLiga
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