Premier League seeks court order to ban footie-streaming Swedish site
BT probably most keen...
5 ways to prepare your advertising infrastructure for disaster
The Premier League is set to ask for a UK court order to force ISPs like BT and Sky to block popular football streaming site FirstRow1.eu.
The Swedish soccer site would be the first to be banned in Blighty if the League gets the order, which the BBC said ISPs weren’t planning to challenge.
Neither BT, Sky nor TalkTalk would comment specifically on the possibility of a block on FirstRow1, but all three said that they would follow any court order.
A TalkTalk spokesperson told The Reg that the ISP maintained that it was not “in principle against blocking provided there is a court order”, while BT said that it would “only block access to websites for online copyright infringement when ordered by a court to do so”.
Virgin said that “as a responsible ISP, we obey court orders when address to the company but we have not received one for this site”.
The Premier League said it would not make any comment due to the legal process.
A number of music and video streaming sites have already been blocked in the UK after successfully sought court orders, including most famously the Pirate Bay. ISPs have consistently said that they won’t close the doors on any site without a court order, but they will block as soon as the court asks them to.
This is one order with which BT and Sky would be happy enough to comply, considering how much they’ve forked over to the Premier League for rights to show the football through their TV offerings.
BT paid £246m for rights to show some of the matches, while Sky paid £760m for its bigger portion of the coverage. ®
