This is how LaLiga wants to end piracy

Anna Kushina (櫛名アンナ) · September 5, 2020

LaLiga not only fights against piracy in Spain, but throughout the world. The supercomputer, which they have used during lockdown for the Folding @ Home project to find a cure for the coronavirus sooner, is now going to be used to protect copyrights of other parties. In recent years, LaLiga has given the Marauder software to the Ministry of Culture so that they create Lumière, which does the same as Marauder, but applied to cinema.

LaLiga Content Protection: the new society against piracy

Now, LaLiga has created a society called LaLiga Content Protection, whose social objective is “the development, commercialization and evolution of computer applications or tools whose purpose is the technological protection of content or intellectual property rights and the provision of services related to said”.

Thus, it seems that LaLiga has decided to create this company beyond the main one to allocate its efforts to the fight against piracy and to be able to market its services more comfortably. Javier Tebas, president of LaLiga, and José Guerra, general manager, are the administrators of this new company, which has its registered office in the same LaLiga offices, and has an initial capital of 3,000 euros. The only partner is the company is the National Professional Football League, better known by its acronym LFP. LaLiga currently has almost 150 people working on tracking illegal content.

Since the LaLiga anti-piracy service, the number of links and content reported has not stopped growing. In the last season, LaLiga reported 1.27 million videos with content related to the competition published on portals such as Twitter or YouTube. Of all the content reported, 98% was removed. Piracy has increased due to Covid-19, since it is not possible to go to stadiums to watch football and it is recommended to avoid overcrowding, so more people watch them from home.

YouTube, IPTV and decos: the biggest enemies of piracy

According to LaLiga data, we have seen the greatest increase in piracy in Youtube (going from 739,000 to 903,000 videos uploaded in the current season), the pages of Pirate IPTV, which go from 9,600 to more than 80,000, and those of illegal decoders, which go from 16,400 to 23,000. According to their estimates, this causes LaLiga to stop earning about 269 million euros.

The key that Marauder works so well is that it analyzes all the links it finds on social networks, as well as looking for hidden watermarks and content that they have issued. If an image from a video matches one of those they have in their database, then they report the link to the corresponding platform so that it can be removed. So, in a matter of minutes, they can block access to content. When they cannot contact the social network because the content is hosted on a website, then they try to report the content hosting provider.

Currently, LaLiga also has an agreement with Dorna Sports to also end pirated content related to MotoGP and WorldSBK. Therefore, forming a company to fight this piracy makes more sense, and it is to be expected that the company’s efforts will continue to increase in this regard.