The three major American sports leagues are losing potential revenue from the illegal streams of their live content. For this, the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC), National Football League (NFL), and National Basketball Association (NBA) are joining forces in a bid to hasten the Digital Millenium Copyright Act (DMCA) takedowns against pirated live streams.
Via a letter, as reported by TorrentFreak, the UFC, NFL, and NBA are pushing the US Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) to make the removal of illegal livestreams nearly instantaneous. The trio is citing the potential loss of up to $28 billion of income from fans who opted to pirate their content rather than pay for it.
In the letter, the leagues argue that online service providers (OSPs) take “hours or even days” to shut down infringing content, leaving infringing content to go on air throughout the entire event.
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At the center of the complaint is DMCA’s statement in Section 512, which suggests that contravening content must be removed “expeditiously”. The issue, however, is that the word itself is not well-defined, prompting it to be changed into something like “instantaneously or near-instantaneously”.
In addition, the leagues are also asking for more exacting requirements for OSPs to authenticate users who are posting livestreams. Such “particular verification measures” would include preventing streams from newly created accounts or those with few subscribers.
Citing the feasibility of the proposal, the letter highlights how said measures were already implemented by certain OSPs.