- DMCA came into effect back in 1998
- ISPs are currently only required to remove or blocks streams as soon as possible
The National Football League (NFL), the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) are demanding changes to US copyright law so that illegal streams of live sporting events can be taken down immediately.
In a letter to the United States Patent and Trademark Office’s (USPTO) consultation on future anti-piracy strategies, the sports properties said current legislation does not take into account the nature of the modern internet and the value of live broadcasts in the sports industry.
Many of the current mechanisms for combating piracy in the US relate to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) which dates back to 1998. The NFL, the NBA and the UFC believe the regulations need to be updated to reflect the modern internet and impose additional obligations on internet service provider (ISPs).
Under the current legislation, it can take several hours for an ISP to block or remove a pirated feed once notified. The argument is that this might be appropriate for a film or television show with a long shelf life, but not live sport. Such a delay means that the live sports event in question has likely concluded before removal, meaning viewers can watch it without disruption.
The properties want the DMCA updated so ISPs must remove pirated content within minutes or hours.
‘Unfortunately, UFC, NBA and NFL’s shared experience is that many [ISPs] frequently take hours or even days to remove content in response to takedown notices – thus allowing infringing live content to remain online during the most anticipated moments, or even the entirety, of a UFC event or an NBA or NFL game,’ the letter reads.
The letter follows the Premier League’s move to strengthen its own anti-piracy measures as it prepares to sell its domestic broadcast rights from 2025/26. English soccer’s top flight has established an internal taskforce of lawyers and content analysts in a bid to identify and remove objectionable feeds and take down entire operations.
SportsPro says…
The DMCA came into effect four years before Major League Baseball (MLB) became the first major professional sports league to live stream a regular season game on the internet. Dial up internet was still widespread, Google was two months old and social media wasn’t even a thing.
The internet we use today is much more advanced, available and affordable, while rising technical literacy and smartphone adoption means sports fans are much more capable of accessing high-quality streams for free, or ones that are cheaper than official channels.
The NFL, NBA and UFC believe illegal streaming is threatening their most important revenue stream and is costing the sports industry as a whole up to US$28 billion a year. Technological and legal solutions to piracy will help sport combat the pirates, but equally important is affordability and convenience. In effect, legal services must be ‘better than free’.