Bad news for Pirates: The Paris Supreme Court issued the blocking order on August 2, just a week after the leagues made the request. This preventive action takes place A few weeks before the start of the 2024/25 season, which is expected to start on August 17.
France’s Professional Football League (LFP) celebrated the move, noting that it was the fourth blocking measure since January 2022, but the first taken before the season started. By anticipating and combating piracy, the leagues aim to protect broadcasting rights from the first day of the new season.
A particularly thorny aspect of the order concerns domains that use the pp.ua service, which offers free subdomains. The court order specifically targets specific subdomains, but an inadvertent blocking of the main domain could affect hundreds of innocent websites.
To combat the agile nature of pirate services, the LFP has a powerful tool. Under French law, it can contact the telecoms regulator ARCOM to quickly add new offending sites to its existing block list. This makes it possible to quickly respond to countermeasures implemented by pirate services.
The leagues’ commitment to protecting their content is clear — by issuing this order before the season starts, they’re sending a strong message to potential offenders — but the technical challenges of implementing such blocks with precision remain significant. This will likely drive some to continue to skirt the law.
