As right holders share their list of ‘notorious markets’ with USTR every year, La Liga, the Spanish football club has shown up with its list this year too. While it mentioned several online platforms like IPTVs, listing eBay, Namecheap and Shopify as notorious markets seemed new. It accused them all of hosting and being unresponsive for their complaints.
La Liga Named eBay as a Notorious Market!
The annual report of notorious markets’ made by the United States Trade Representative every year is not completely based on self-research. The USTR takes suggestions from several rights holder groups around the world, to compile the annual report. And this year, new suggestions from Spanish football club may enter the list.
La Liga has shared its list of notorious markets to USTR, mentioning some relevant names and few intermediaries who seemed unusual.
Starting with IPTV services like Seko IPTV, VolkaIPTV, Megaplay, ATN and King 365 TV, the report also have IPTV URLs and IPTV SAT mentioned as illegal playlist forums. It said the “biggest concern consists of the illegal streaming of live sports competitions by people or companies that are not authorized to do so.”
The next section includes similar illegal streaming platforms like Cable Gratis TV, Hulk Sport, BeIN Match, Pirlo TV and Yalla Shoot. While these seemed usual, La Liga mentioned hosting provider – Namecheap in its list, which is unusual.
It claims that these platforms can help to thwart the infringers, but don’t respond accordingly. It said that “most of the Hosting Providers Companies ignore e-mails and letters referred to IPR infringements.”
Further, it mentioned Shopify, Cloudflare, BlueAngelHost and Offshore-Servers as notorious markets too, since they don’t respond to IPR complaints.
Also, eBay and Alibaba were listed for offering illegal set-top boxes and IPTV deals. While these platforms are “somewhat cooperative” in terms of enforcement, La Liga wished for more. It also includes cyberlockers like Mega, MediaFire and Uptobox. Finally, it mentioned Telegram for serving groups that share pirate streaming links.
It said “We have detected that Telegram is increasingly being used to illegally share copyright-protected contents through certain channels.
Those channels have significantly increased their users.” Some or all of these companies will be listed in USTR’s annual list, which will push regulators to take action on them.
