The Premier League could be in hot water after it won a court case where IP Addresses supplied to internet providers mean a website can be blocked. The particular cock up relates to Front Row Sports, a Swedish website that provides links to live stream football matches, however the football authority also included the IP Addresses of totally unrelated websites. The court order put full responsibility for identifying the offending website on the Premier League itself and specifically stated that the internet providers such as BT, Virgin Media, Sky and Talktalk had no responsibility to ensure these were correct. As a result, when the Premier League provided a list of IP Address for the blocking of First Row Sports internet users quickly discovered that many of the IP Addresses had in fact blocked the sites of other companies such as RadioTimes.com. The editor of Radio Times has expressed his anger at the Premier League's scatter gun approach. "It's outrageous that our website has been suddenly switched off and our users wrongly informed that it's to protect against copyright infringement," said Ben Preston. "The Premier League seems to be behaving like the worst sort of blundering striker who's forgotten the first rule of football - check you're at the right end before you shoot." As a result of this incorrect and unchecked ommission virtually all internet providers have disregarded High Court rulings and have allowed their customers full access to all IP Addresses, including that of First Row Sport, until the Premier League provides a correct list that targets only the one website that they are required by British law to restrict access. The Premier League has expressed it's concern that all the ISP's together decided to no longer comply with banning of First Row Sports, however, as the court ruling which had already passed all appeals stated that the ISP's are to be under no obligation to check themselves that the IP Addresses are correct there is nothing the Premier League can do to force a temporary ban of all the addresses until they have had time to provide an accurate list. The internet providers are within the law to reject any action if it meant that innocent websites were mistakenly or deliberately sent to them, and the legal onus is on the Premier League to rectify the problem itself if it does indeed want the block put in place. More worryingly for the Premier League is the possibility that the hundreds of legitimate websites caught up in this mistake may decide to embark on their own legal action to reclaim loss of earnings and damage to their reputation as all their customers received a message citing copyright infringement orders from her majesties courts upon entering their web domains. During this time nobody was able to contact the affected domains site administrators from the internet due to the block which lasted a few days, and the issue only came to light when internet users were forced to contact the media to raise the alert.
Let them block it. Anyone with an ounce of internet knowledge knows there will be a work around available within 2 days. It will just make a nice headline for them. They blocked pirate bay and there were mirror sites up within hours.
The point is there could be at least 1000 times more people who do not know about proxies and they would have been interested in websites like RadioTimes, or one of the many online stores that got blocked. Just imagine a site like Amazon, or LoveFilm, had been in that list... the investors and customers would have seen the site blocked with the words from the court. Reputation would have been decimated in the short time it takes the stock exchange to act. Those two have their own streaming services and this rash approach from the Premier League could lead to massive court cases in the future because it is not unreasonable to think that a company like those two would suffer a 20% drop in their market value on either the NYSE or FTSE within the first hour of such a cock up being noticed by an investor (or a friend of their or family member who knows they have millions in them). Word spreads quicker around the trading floor than it does in the news, they'd be selling shares before it is known to be a mistake.
the courts can't touch foreign broadcasters from showing sport for free. they have been trying for years but cant stop it....the computer is a smart bit of kit and will always find ways around any blocks attempted to be made....Its our services that are ripping people off and they fear its coming to an end getting money for something that is free if you know where to look...
I know mate, I was just making the point that if you're relatively internet savvy, it doesn't make a jot of difference.
