Last March, the Minister of Culture Franck Riester presented a bill relating to audiovisual communication and cultural sovereignty in the digital age. In it, specifically article 23, it was about the fight against sports piracy and the improvement of the means implemented to fight against this phenomenon.
In development for many years now, with the emergence and democratization of the Internet, sports streaming had always managed to escape justice by betting on a diversification of its sources and an international deployment. Thanks to a live broadcast, or in quasi-direct, the sites could be maintained even before the sanctions and prohibitions fell. These are only given afterwards, after a long and tedious procedure.
With article 23 of the bill of the ministry for the Culture, the objective was therefore to offer more means to the judiciary and to fight effectively against the sports piracy, in particular with the possibility offered to the judge to make prohibit immediately the offending sites.
Tools to fight piracy need to be strengthened
However, this does not go far enough. In any case, this is what Senator LR Michel Savin notes, the author of a bill relating specifically to the fight against sports piracy. The elected representative of Isère regrets “that to date no commitment from the government has been made regarding the examination of this text and the adoption of this measure”.
According to him, his bill will allow “rapid adoption of the device” and “will be a strong signal sent to sports and audiovisual players, who are experiencing very great difficulties in this particular period”. Michel Savin recalls that football TV rights will exceed 1.153 billion euros next season and that in addition to supporting the competitiveness of French professional clubs, they finance a large part of the amateur championships, via redistribution and assigned taxes .
Doing nothing against piracy would therefore risk maintaining uncertainty for broadcasters and rights holders and damaging the sustainable economic outlook. It is estimated that piracy would cost up to 100 million euros a year in lost profits and would capture at least 20% of sports audiences.
Sites could be closed immediately
The bill would then allow the President of the judicial court, after referral, to order the implementation of all measures to end access, from French territory, to pirated content for a period of twelve months, such as blocking, withdrawing or dereferencing online communication services whose main objective or one of the main objectives would be the broadcasting without authorization of competitions or sporting events.
Likewise, it would offer the possibility to sworn agents to infiltrate pirate networks and to “participate under a pseudonym in electronic exchanges likely to relate to infringements of rights” and “to extract, acquire or preserve by this means elements of evidence on these services for the purpose of their characterization. “
In other words, there may henceforth be spies in forums and sports streaming sites capable of having the pages immediately banned as soon as the offense is observed.
The bill must now be sent to the Committee on Culture, Education and Communication before the final vote. Michel Savin’s LR group having a majority in the Senate, it will most certainly be voted on, before being sent to the Assembly, with a majority in En Marche.
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