Intermediaries Are (Still) Slow to Disconnect Pirate Live Streams, Report Finds

In recent years, the European Commission has proposed and adopted various legislative changes to help combat online piracy.

The Copyright Directive and the Digital Services Act both envisioned tighter copyright takedown rules for online service providers.

Sports rightsholders and other organizations felt that these new rules were not sufficient to tackle specific challenges in respect of live streaming piracy. They wanted more incentives for online service providers to act faster and more diligently, as suspensions are useless after a live broadcast ends.

The EU Commission heard these calls and published a targeted recommendation, “encouraging” member states to introduce measures to facilitate prompt takedowns of live streams. At the same time, service providers and rightsholders were encouraged to collaborate, to tackle this challenge together.

The recommendation, which doesn’t include any legislative requirements, was largely met with disappointment by rightsholders. They had hoped for strong restrictions, binding takedown requirements, or at least some kind of formal regulation. Those didn’t come.

Report Shows Low Responsiveness to Takedown Notices

Against this backdrop, it’s no surprise that rightsholders remain unhappy. Almost two years after the EU recommendation, a report from the accounting firm Grant Thornton, created in partnership with the Live Content Coalition finds that little has changed.

The report’s title leaves little to the imagination. It stresses that, after seventeen months, the EU recommendation on combating online piracy of live events has had limited impact.

The report finds that live-streaming piracy remains a problem and online intermediaries continue to show low responsiveness to takedown notices. Of the 10.8 million notices recorded last year, only 19% resulted in suspensions of pirated live streams.

Roughly two-thirds of all takedown notices were not addressed at all, as shown below. The remaining 15% was addressed but, for reasons not detailed in the report, the intermediaries did not suspend the streams.

Even when online services take action, it often takes more time than rights holders would like. Only a small fraction of the reported live streams, 2.7%, were suspended within 30 minutes of a takedown notice being sent.

Dedicated Server Providers are Most Problematic

These numbers are disappointing to rightsholders, but it’s worth stressing that not all intermediaries have a bad track record. Of the notices that were sent to online services such as social media platforms, 98% resulted in suspensions of the pirated streams.

For Dedicated Server Providers, which received the most notices, the suspension rate is notably lower: 11%.

The notices sent to the remaining category of “other providers” led to suspensions in 8% of cases. This category is not defined, which makes the rate difficult to interpret, but it could include CDN services and cloud hosting providers.

Reappearance of copyright-infringing streams is also more common through Dedicated Server Providers.

“Online platforms have a 7.6% rate of no-reoccurrence within the day, while DSPs have a significantly higher rate at 39.5% further indicating the scale of the issues relating to these intermediaries,” the report reads.

Not The Full Picture

The report was commissioned by the industry and is based on data provided by eight major rightsholders. This means that it doesn’t necessarily present the full scope of all takedown notices and the real numbers are likely much higher.

The report is also limited in its view of the problem. The lack of definition for “other providers” could use more context, for example. The same applies to the reasons why intermediaries ‘fail’ to take action, which could include erroneous or incomplete takedown requests.

Further research into the motivations and challenges faced by intermediaries could help to paint a more nuanced picture and foster future cooperation.

Rightsholders see the report as confirmation that more should be done to tackle live-streaming piracy. The EU recommendation has had limited effect, the Live Content Coalition says, noting that none of the key performance indicators (KPIs) show any real progress.

“Overall, there were only marginal improvements in KPIs throughout 2024, which demonstrates the limited impact of the Recommendation against the sizable piracy problem where mitigation efforts are mostly ignored,” the Live Content Coalition comments.

Top Spanish football league LALIGA agrees. They note that piracy remains a major problem and since EU efforts have had little effect, more should be done.

“The report highlights the need to strengthen cooperation agreements and accelerate takedown times for infringements. It also underscores the importance of implementing additional specific measures for DSPs, who represent the largest source of unsuspended illegal broadcasts,’ LALIGA says.

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A copy of the latest progress report, titled “The European Commission Recommendation on combatting online piracy of live events has limited impact after 17 months” is available here (pdf)

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.