Canada’s Federal Court Grants NBA, NHL, & Premier League Piracy Blockades

Canada's Federal Court has granted a new 'dynamic' piracy blocking order, requiring Internet providers to block specific IP addresses associated with sports streaming piracy. The order covers upcoming NBA, NHL, and Premier League games. It was amended swiftly on Friday, to cover last night's Euro 2024 football final too.

Three years ago, Canada’s Federal Court of Appeal upheld the first pirate site-blocking order in the country.

The landmark decision opened the door to additional and more advanced blocking requests. Indeed, it didn’t take long before NHL broadcasters asked the court for a pirate streaming blocking order of their own.

This NHL blocking action was followed by a FIFA World Cup blocking order, which was also granted without further hassle. Following up on these successes, sports rightsholders added MLB pirates to their list of targets.

The blocking injunctions were not standalone requests. Instead, the interlocutory orders are part of lawsuits against the operators of the pirate streaming servers. On paper, the goal of the lawsuits is to pursue claims against these defendants and the blockades are a temporary measure to limit the damage these services cause.

This approach made sense, as filing a lawsuit simply for blocking purposes wasn’t common. However, after several injunctions were granted over the past three years, in April rightsholders streamlined their tactics by expanding the coverage of their blocking efforts.

New NHL, NBA and Premier League Piracy Blockade

Instead of pursuing blocking requests separately, rightsholders including Bell, Fubo TV, Rogers, and The Sports Network filed a request that covered multiple sports. The organizations sought to secure a blocking order for new NBA, NHL and Premier League games, identifying three “John Doe” defendants.

The defendants were not named but several IP addresses were identified. These appear to have been used by several piracy operations, including the publicly available pirate streaming site ‘epllive.net’ and paid subscription platforms including ‘TVSmarters’, which are mentioned by name.

From the blocking application
 

Canada’s Federal Court granted the joint blocking request last Tuesday. A publicly available copy of the order has all IP addresses redacted, resulting in numerous blacked out pages.

Dynamic and Expanding

The ‘dynamic’ blocking order allows rightsholders to go back to court, to expand the list of blocked IP addresses. This helps to keep the injunction up-to-date, in the event that pirate streaming services try to circumvent the blocking measures.

Unlike the IP addresses, the ‘game windows’ and targeted games are not a secret. They cover upcoming NBA, NHL, and Premier League games, with the length varying per sport.

The NBA order remains valid until the 2025-2026 season. Coverage for pre-season and regular season games is limited to the only Canadian NBA team, the Toronto Raptors, likely due to rights issues. For the playoffs, non-Raptors games should be blocked too.

The Premier League order has no restrictions and applies to the 2023-2024 season, which has already ended, and the upcoming 2024-2025 season, yet to get underway.

The NHL blocking order appears to have come too late. According to the court documents, it covers the 2023-2024 season and the 2024 Stanley Cup. These ended before the court approved the court order.

The early expiration can be addressed, as the court order also includes the option to submit amendments to the scope of the order, without intervention from the court. This means that the NHL games for the upcoming season can be added, provided that the rights are secured.

The rightsholders requested this ‘expansion’ option because that would be more efficient than having to go back to court again and launch a separate proceeding. If a rightsholder needs more than two amendments, however, the court has to review the matter again.

Updates are not limited to NBA, NHL, or Premier League content. They can also cover different leagues or entirely different sports, as long as the requesting party has the appropriate rights.

Last-Minute Euro 2024 Piracy Blockade

The new amendment option was swiftly put to use. Just a few days after the court granted the order, an amendment request sought to expand the blocking order to cover the Euro 2024 football final, which took place yesterday.

This amendment was granted last Friday and, assuming that the targeted ISPs responded in time, were implemented before the broadcast started.

All in all, the recent orders show that rightsholders in Canada continue to optimize and streamline their blocking measures. This will undoubtedly frustrate some piracy services operating locally. That said, successfully defeating piracy remains a challenge.

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A copy of the latest orders, as requested by the NBA, NHL, and Premier League is available here (pdf), courtesy of Teksavvy, which shared it publicly in the interests of transparency

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