Now that the new season of LaLiga, the measures to cut illegal retransmissions such as pirate IPTV are being tightened a lot, thanks to the judicial power that together with Movistar they have to knock down broadcasts and domains. However, what do torrent sites have to do with live sports streaming?
LaLiga and Movistar Plus+, owned by Telefรณnica, have the authority in Spain to order local ISPs to block the sites that allow people to watch live matches for free, though itโs not always clear which ones. In addition to targeting pirated IPTV streaming platforms, both companies are also trying to disrupt millions of torrents.
Neither pirate IPTV nor torrents to watch LaLiga
In 2022, Movistar convinced a judge to force ISPs to block pirate IPTV streaming servers within three hours of notification. This made one of the largest holders of audiovisual rights in our country get more power for the anti-piracy fight. Basically, in addition to allowing them the power to maintain the list of blocked websites, they can also require the rest of the operators to apply the relevant blocks within that period of 3 hours at the most.
LaLiga and Telefรณnica have enough power to block all kinds of web pages that offer free football, according to their criteria. It is precisely in the matter of criteria where the line between what is piracy and what is not ends up blurring. This controversy applies mainly when seeing what is the list of domains blocked in Phase 2 of the joint operation between Movistar and LaLiga.
Most of the domains on the list are directly related to pirated IPTV services (either streaming portals directly or for sales of their illegal lists) or are clearly illegal streaming websites. However, a significant number of domains are categorized as โtorrentโ and due to their very nature, rarely linked to live sports stream hacking.
Again against Acestream
The first domain in the torrent category is acestream.org, the home of the streaming client Ace Stream. The inclusion of this domain in the block list of Spain has been known for a long time and is considered controversial. The Dominion does not offer content protected by copyright And while some users of the Ace Stream client use the software for infringing purposes, the developers of Ace Stream insist that their software is content-neutral and completely legal.
What this app actually does is facilitate and allow the viewing of streaming content via P2P. All users who use this app to view any type of content will also be sharing it with other users, which means that the more users there are sharing the signal, the better its stability and quality will be. In other words, the users are responsible for the broadcasts, since, as we say, AceStream does not give access to any type of illegal content.
Also on the list is www.futbolgratis.workers.dev, a URL that recognizes Telefรณnicaโs blocking before redirecting to another domain. Since their stated purpose is to provide links to Ace Stream which in turn link to illegal live streams, the justification for the blocking is much more obvious than for acestream.org.
