IPTVs are already in the crosshairs of the police and rights holders, after years of going relatively unnoticed compared to other methods of viewing pirated content. One of the reasons IPTVs didn’t receive much attention until last year is that, technically, they don’t do anything illegal; It is simply a technology for streaming videos over the Internet. The key, of course, is what gets broadcast.
While it is true that there are many IPTVs with pirated content, which allow you to watch football matches without paying the subscription and access content posted online by streaming services, it is not no less true that there are also numerous legal and free content; In fact, many public channels broadcast via IPTV, such as RTVE and regional and local channels in Europe.
To easily manage and access this content, whether legal or illegal, IPTV lists are used, usually in .m3u8 files which can be opened by programs such as VLC and applications on Android and Android TV. These are literally lists of servers that serve content publicly; This way there is no need to search for them one by one. That Easy to use This is also why they are so popular for distributing pirated content, and why they have become the new target of rights holders, who use tools like DMCA requests to remove them from the Internet.
However, these actions remain controversial, as shown by the case of an IPTV listing removed at the request of DAZN. The list, created by user Matt Huisman, stood out for its offering Content of the PlutoTV platformwhich included content that DAZN has a license for.
PlutoTV is one of the greatest alternatives to IPTV, an application that offers access to free movies and series without the need for a subscription, simply by creating an account; It is available for all major platforms and is very simple to use, but not simple enough for some users. The list created by Matt Huisman allowed access PlutoTV content using any IPTV compatible program, from computers to mobile phones, tablets and televisions; and he was able to do this because, in reality, the addresses of PlutoTV broadcasts are public and there is no type of blocking that limits access to them.
The “only” thing the Huisman server did was redirect application requests to the address of the shows available at any time on PlutoTV; This way, users can still access live broadcast content, whether or not the broadcast (and its link) changes. However, that wasn’t enough of an excuse for DAZN, which issued a DMCA request to remove the listing from Github, where it was publicly available.
This is a logical decision, since DAZN has the right to maintain control over access to its content; However, it’s also a more complicated decision than it seems. After all, PlutoTV broadcasts publicly and without any type of verification (for example, it does not require a login); In this context, the IPTV listing only allows access to this same content, so it is not clear if it is really illegal, as explained in TorrentFreak. This would be a question for lawyers and judges, but it is understandable that Huisman preferred not to take risks and that I deleted the listat least for now.
This isn’t the only legal IPTV listing to have received a similar DMCA request; Normally, they are used by American companies to request the removal of content that may violate their “copyright”, such as direct downloads. But in recent months they have also been used against IPTV listings, and there is no precedent for whether this should be possible; For example, LaLiga recently filed a similar motion against Google to take down one of the largest IPTV lists.
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