English Premier League 2012/2013

When is this thread changing for 2013/2014?

Is that Wednesday?

Is that Wednesday?

What if he just wins 5 league cups?

The Premier League is to request a court order forcing internet service providers to block a popular football streaming website before the next season.

The League wants ISPs to cut off access to FirstRow1.eu, which operates from Sweden.

The BBC understands none of the ISPs plan to challenge the court order.

If successful, the action will be the first non-music-related site block in the UK.

The Premier League's move follows a precedent set by the BPI music industry body, which has been successful in having several piracy websites blocked in the UK, most notably the Pirate Bay.

In those cases, ISPs have stood firm and insisted they would only take action if ordered to do so by the courts.

The UK's major ISPs each received a letter from the Premier League outlining a possible court order, and were given a deadline of Friday to signal any intent to challenge the action.

When approached by the BBC, none of the ISPs would comment specifically on the Premier League's planned action, but all reiterated that blocking of sites would not be done voluntarily.

'Conflicts of interest'
The situation raises additional issues for BT, as from next season it will be a major distributor of Premier League football through its new sports TV channels.

BT has paid £246m for rights to show Premier League football, while Sky paid £760m for its portion of the coverage.

Sky's ISP operation has historically been seen as taking a more sympathetic stance with copyright holders requesting the blocking of sites, whereas BT has in the past taken such battles to court on behalf of the ISP industry as a whole.

Jim Killock, of the Open Rights Group, said he worried that conflicted interests might lead to the blocking process becoming less transparent.

"All of the major ISPs now have differing degrees of conflicts of interest," he told the BBC.

"Sky, BT, Virgin and TalkTalk all supply televisions services now, so we have to expect that there will be more reluctance to be as transparent as they have been in the past."

Mr Killock also expressed concern that as the process for granting court orders gets quicker, it may lead to sites being wrongly blocked out.

"It's possible that very legitimate services will at some point be attacked by one of these orders.

"Our main concern here is that these orders should be considered slowly, and they should be subject to much more public review."

FirstRow1.eu did not respond to the BBC's request for comment.

Fuck harming the EPL. Maybe the shitcunts should give us an option to watch all of our countries games before attacking sites that offer the games to us.

I didn't say I had any moral objection to it did I?

Just that it's a fucking business and they're going to go after things that are illegally harming their business.

I don't see how you can struggle to understand that concept.

Fuck harming the EPL. Maybe the shitcunts should give us an option to watch all of our countries games before attacking sites that offer the games to us.

The system was put in place to protect stadium attendances, but being able to watch every match televised doesn't seem to hurt any other country. I paid £70 to be able to watch every single NBA match via League Pass and I don't see why the Premier League can't do what the NBA does, which means if a television rights holder has it available then it is blacked out, but if it is not being televised then it's available on League Pass. Sky do a good job of embracing the modern age, I'm surprised the Premier League haven't joined them by trying to sell matches as a package directly over the internet. It's a fucking goldmine.

Well yeah, that's the point. They need to adapt their model to how people consume their media. It's only in the face of piracy that is forcing companies to address the issue they have, music had Napster/Youtube, film and television have Piratebay, Books had self-publishings/OCR, live sports have streams.

Music adapted by making music readily available to purchase free and easy over the internet and with youtube and spotify.

Film and television have Netflix, Amazon Instant, iPlayer, HBO Go etc

Books have the Kindle marketplace, which is arguable the most successful online endeavour of all the art forms.

Sports have MLB TV, NBA League Pass, NFL TV etc. That isn't a coincidence, America runs the most profitable sporting leagues in the world for a very particular reason: they monetise.

The Premier League should look at lobbying and then changing their model to suit the new age totally. I don't see why a conversation can't be had, everyone knows that you can't stop piracy, you have to compete with it.

I'd argue in every single one of those instances the medium hasn't adapted fully, though, which is the point I'm trying to make.

It's about doing just enough but I think perhaps 2 or 3 examples provide better services than the illegal counterpart and most are hamstrung by protectionist portions of industries they rely on.

Almost certain Sky or the Premier League did try the pay to watch a certain match back in like 2000 or 2001 when I was still living back in Ireland. It was frustrating as fuck because it'd always have the likes of Arsenal, United and Liverpool on it, so the bigger teams games you'd have to pay to watch.