A lot of the sporting events that can be watched at these broadcasting sites like Myp2p are things that you would otherwise only be able to see by purchasing an expensive premium cable subscription, like NHL Center Ice, or whatever the soccer equivalent would be. In some cases, there is no national broadcast of the game, so the game being broadcast is from a local feed from some far away city.
If these games are pay content, why isn’t it illegal to broadcast them over the internet?
Why do you assume it’s not?..just because people are doing it?
People are also selling bootleg DVDs on hundreds of street corners in New York, which is just as illegal. It just takes a lot of time and effort to enforce.
I’m pretty sure those sites are illegal. The Steelers-Lions game got shut down on a few places last weekend. I have the NFL package at home but if I want to check in on the game from work I use one of those sites. If the password gets posted on a message board the feed gets shut down soon afterward.
I don’t. Myp2p has been around for at least a year, and appears to be solely devoted to free sports broadcasts. So my guess is that they would have been sued by someone by now if the broadcasts were illegal. Even if they had been threatened with a lawsuit, they might remove the content if damages would be accruing between the time of the notice and an actual trial.
My question also.
Just because something manages to survive on the internet doesn’t mean that it’s not breaking the law of one or more countries. According to a Whois search, the MyP2P servers appear to be located in the Netherlands. It could be that something about the site makes it OK under Dutch law, or it could be simply that the Dutch authorities haven’t been able to shut it down for one reason or another.
Without knowing a lot more about how the site works, whether it licenses content from copyright owners, etc., you can’t assume that its mere existence is indicative that what it’s doing is legal.
I think this is different than bootleg DVDs, because lots of people are probably making those (production and selling is more distributed). In the case of Myp2p it’s a website that is operating in the open. It would be a lot harder to stop the DVD bootlegs than to sue Myp2p.
If you look at the Notice and Takedown section of the site, you’ll see that it makes two key points:
the site itself does not host content; the content is hosted by third parties
if you inform the site that some of their links lead to illegal content (content under copyright), and give appropriate evidence, then the site will " take action in removing links to illegal content."
In some countries, this sort of disclaimer, especially on sites that don’t actually host any files, is sufficient to skirt the law. It doesn’t mean that the stuff you view when you go to that site isn’t being illegally copied and/or rebroadcast.
It’s not that it’s ‘sufficient to skirt the law’. It’s simply that the law is untested. Linking to copyright material, as opposed to hosting it, is a grey area in all countries. Until there’s a succesful prosecution it will continue to be so.
Thanks. Is linking to copyright material different than the way that materials were shared by Napster (songs are copyrighted material, right?)? I never used Napster or any music sharing site so I don’t know how they worked.
Is anyone aware of a legal challenge that has been filed (but not yet decided) against a host that is linking to copyright TV material in the way that MyP2P is doing?
Pirate Bay comes immediately to mind. Except you can’t just find TV shows there, it allows you to search for torrents for practically any media. There’s probably better articles if you look around, but this might help.
Are these sites rebroadcasting someone else’s play-by-play, or are they describing the action of the game as it takes place?
If I recall correctly, the courts have ruled that claims by the team owners of copyright on a description of a game, either live or from memory, by a person watching the game in person, are not valid. Thus, someone watching the game in the stadium can be describing it on a cell phone to someone who enters it into a Web page.
Basically, the theory is that anyone can describe any live event to anyone else under the First Amendment. I do not know if the courts ruled on the validity of imposing such a restriction as part of the terms of sale of a ticket to the game.
Someone watching the game on TV and describing it on the Web may be a violation of the broadcaster’s copyright - although it would be almost unenforceable.
I have no cite for this, just something I read a year or two ago, and I make no claim for the accuracy or the legal validity of the information.
Why would it have to be a successful prosecution? An unsuccessful prosecution can also act as a test of the law, especially in something like a copyright case.
If, for example, a copyright holder sued MyP2P in a Dutch court, and the court ruled that MyP2P was not liable because it was not actually hosting the files, that wouldn’t mean that the law is “untested.” In fact, the law would have been tested, and found in MyP2P’s favor.
Thanks.
The linked article says
What if a court did take technical details into account? Are there any good arguments to suggest that there’s a meaningful technical difference (e.g., between linking and file sharing of copyright material) that would result in a finding of no copyright infringement in the case of MyP2P?
In contrast to copyrighted movies or music, for a sports broadcast, in almost all cases a viewer can go to a sports bar and watch the content for free. Does this mean that there’s minimal harm to the sports copyright owner if there is broadcast link available on the internet? If the sports broadcast holder can’t prove damages, this could be a reason not to sue in the first place.
I don’t know if what MyP2P is doing would fall within “describing someone else’s broadcast.”
I’ll have to ask my fiance what site he goes through. He’s a Toronto Maple Leafs fan (yeah, I know, they suck eggs hard), but he doesn’t want to pay for the whole NHL package just for the couple games he might be able to catch. So he watches the Leafs games online when he’s not working. He says he watches it on a Canadian site (he made a comment about Canadian commercials), so perhaps he’s watching some local re-broadcast or something.
But that makes me think. If it’s legal to rebroadcast and watch in Canada (for this thought experiment, let’s assume it is, even though it may not be), but you are watching it in the States, where it’s not, are you in trouble? Or is it okay because it’s the rebroadcasting that’s the crime, not the watching, so if the rebroadcasting is done legally, the watching is legal?
The bar is paying for the right to show the broadcast. It’s not free.
I’ve been trying to figure out for a few years exactly who has the US internet radio rights to international cricket. I even went so far as to try to buy them from the ICC (for $1 US…hmmm, maybe I should have offered more). AFAIK, nobody has the rights to any of the matches, with the exception of the official ICC tournaments and England home matches.
So if I were to listen to an internet radio broadcast of such a match, would it be illegal? Exactly whose rights would I be infringing?
Yes. I was assuming that the bar pays the same as an individual subscriber.
If the bar pays the same as an individual subscriber, doesn’t the copyright holder lose revenue if 50 people watch the game at the sports bar rather than paying for the premium television subscription package? I’m willing to discuss this, but the answer to this question is not what I’m most interested in.
I would still like to know whether the internet sports broadcasts are a copyright infringement or not. So far it sounds like it’s a grey area.
I hope that others who are familiar with copyright law as it pertains to internet tv broadcasts will weigh in.
No, the bar pays a license to broadcast in a commercial environment, IIRC. There are restrictions on size of TVs and number of viewers if you don’t.
Internet sports broadcasting isn’t a gray area, it’s a violation of the copyright. The problem is knowing who to go after and making it economical to do so.
Thank you. I apologize if I misunderstood the previous posts.
I still don’t understand why enforcement is economically unfavorable in this case, but I can accept that is the case.