In October 2022, over 100 rightsholders, powerful media groups, and various organizations, demanded decisive action from the European Commission to tackle IPTV piracy of live sports and similar events.
Familiar names, including the MPA, UEFA, Premier League, Sky, beIN, LaLiga, and Serie A, demanded legislative change from the European Commission to ‘End Live Piracy Now’. That didn’t happen, and with no legislative instruments or European-wide regulation on the table, the EC launched a new consultation. Advice on how to use a ‘toolbox’ of existing measures appeared in a subsequent recommendation.
In October 2025, a full three years after their initial demands failed to elicit the preferred response, a coalition of rightsholders is once again demanding urgent action from the European Commission.
Coalition Demands New Legislation
In a letter addressed to Executive Vice-President Henna Virkkunen and Commissioner Glenn Micallef, top-ranking executives representing some of the most powerful corporations, sports leagues, broadcasters, and other rights holders make it clear that patience has run out.
After emphasizing their significant contribution to European entertainment, culture, and the wider EU economy, the coalition reports that the investment required to produce content of the highest quality, is still under threat from criminals operating illegally in the market.
“Our investments continue to be threatened by organized criminal enterprises. For years, rightsowners have raised the alarm. Today, piracy has reached scales that can no longer be ignored,” their letter to the EC notes.
“While we acknowledge the important work undertaken by the European Commission in addressing this challenge through the 2023 Recommendation on combating online piracy of sports and other live events, its implementation has yet to deliver tangible results. We therefore look forward to seeing further legislative steps being taken to achieve the objectives set out in the Recommendation.”
Billions of Euros in ‘Losses’
The scale of the problem is highlighted with reference to estimated losses to rightsholders running to many billions of euros. In most cases these figures concern revenue predictions for a hypothetical market free of piracy, so not actual losses per se, but still unrealized potential, in part due to unlicensed and illegal competition.
These ‘losses’ include €1.5 billion in France (actually €1.2 billion according to official data), where recent reports indicate that under existing legislation, IPTV piracy has already been contained.
The inclusion of €2.2 billion in estimated ‘losses’ in Italy appears to run counter to the claimed success of the Piracy Shield blocking system. That said, the figure receives at least partial support from reports that damages are soaring because Piracy Shield isn’t effective.
The letter also references a recent report indicating that the effectiveness of takedown notices has plummeted to an all-time low. As previously reported, the report seemed positioned to demand more action from EU lawmakers against intermediaries.
A deterioration in compliance rates would’ve been useful in negotiations, but taken in context, the figures paint a different picture.
Demands for Legislative Change
To tackle the threat posed by criminal competition, failing anti-piracy measures, and a EC Recommendation that had no measurable effect, the coalition is demanding the European Commission to urgently implement the following:
1. Ensure that, upon receipt of a notice, infringing content is taken down as near to immediately as possible and in all cases within a maximum time frame of 30 minutes. The urgency of live event piracy justifies a far shorter timeframe which is further supported by the fact that such removal can already be effected in a significantly shorter timeframe using the technology solutions available today.
2. Ensure EU-wide live dynamic blocking orders (including IP blocking) that address mirror sites and successor domains are made available in all Member States.
3. Ensure intermediaries (including but not limited to platforms, hosts, VPN, CDN and app stores) introduce and maintain robust Know Your Business Customer (KYBC) policies.
The Proposals: Good For Rightsholders, Bad For Everyone Else
Proposal 1 doesn’t appear to demand much from a legal perspective. It aligns with existing copyright law, the principle of rapid action to mitigate harm, and discards ambiguous terms in existing legislation (such as “expeditiously”) by defining a specific timeframe.
If we assume that the coalition wants the 30-minute maximum enshrined in law, that’s a fairly clear sign that in the absence of prosecutions against the operators of pirate IPTV services, liability would likely shift to intermediaries.
The significant burden of compliance warrants a reference to Piracy Shield’s 30-minute requirement and the fact that since its inception, ISPs have received nothing in exchange for compliance and have paid all costs from their own profits.
Proposal 2 concerning EU-wide live dynamic blocking orders, is much more complex than a short paragraph of text could ever hope to explain. On one hand, EU law already obliges member states to allow rightsholders to defend their rights, but specifying the means through which that should be achieved is something new.
A broad, results-based definition might work, but the fact that the coalition is insisting on legislation, suggests potential pushback from governments and/or local ISPs against implementing such measures. The reasons behind the reluctance may be quite complex, but it’s possible that aspects of national copyright law that align with the requirements of the EU cannot (or are not required to) accommodate the specific requirements of the major rightsholders.
The demand for IP address blocking to be enshrined in law disregards the findings of a highly competent study which details the failures of Piracy Shield. The study found that IP address blocking caused significant levels of collateral damage, with the knock-on effects still continuing today.
Proposal 3 calling for “robust KYC policies for intermediaries” is nothing new, but once again, intermediaries face the burden of compliance.
Based on the assumption that compliance would be enforceable, new legal obligations would ensure that the cost of compliance would come right off intermediaries’ bottom lines. Or, more likely, increase the costs for the 99%+ of customers for whom formal identification would be of no benefit, leaving less than 1% of potentially criminal customers to identify using fake or stolen documents, as many do already.
It’s important to note that the proposals in the letter are exceptionally brief and lack key details and nuance that will only develop in time. That being said, at face value the most cynical part of the proposal concerns app stores, CDNs, and VPNs.
Since app stores already require developers to comply with rules under the Digital Services Act, the mention here raises questions of who the proposal targets. The prospect of ~740 million European citizens having to show their papers to gain access to mobile apps would be an extraordinary proposal. The negative effect on privacy, amplified by increased risk of data breaches and other cybersecurity threats, would be unquestionably disproportionate.
Introduce the same concept to many VPN providers, for whom the privacy model plays a central role in everything from hosting choices to online marketing, mandatory KYBC rules would undermine their entire business and the privacy of millions of customers.
The requirement would almost guarantee that subscribers would immediately seek alternatives and spend their money outside the EU.
None of the proposals directly specify their targets, so may be subject to change or interpretation. But for the purpose of identifying a vanishingly small number of potential bad actors, each with a limitless supply of stolen data to identify as someone else, the proposal seems destined to fail.
From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.
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