In the days leading to the opening day of the 2014 World Cup, majority of football fans cannot afford to purchase a trip to Brazil, and score liveable accommodations and hot match tickets to boot to watch some of your favorite teams compete for the coveted championship trophy. Instead, they rely on pay television providers to hook them up to premium channels who broadcast the matches live. For the cash-strapped ones, they rely on good, 'ol Internet for illegal streaming.
FIFA has certainly acknowledged this problem, and has made steps to be able to salvage what potential revenue could be lost from pirate sites who illegally stream the matches.
According to a Torrentfreak article, an anonymous pirate site operator has received a letter signed by Director of Legal Affairs Marco Villiger and his colleague Jörg Vollmüller for FIFA demanding the streams to be taken down. The letter, which carried language that it has also sent the same demand to other pirate site operators, has said that those who refuse to take down the streams will be facing criminal liability.
"Due to the nature of your service, we anticipate that a large number of users will continually use your website to create, distribute and/or link to live streams via the Internet of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil. We want to ensure that all infringing streams can be promptly identified and removed, regardless of whether they can be viewed openly or through private areas of your site," FIFA wrote in the said letter.
Moreover, FIFA has demanded certain steps to be able to monitor the pirate site's compliance to the demand. "As you have been provided with the specific dates and times of all matches, we thereby expect a member of your website team to be present and available to promptly perform this duty during and throughout ALL matches of the 2014 FIFA World Cup Brazil. Provide a service or tool whereby NetResult, FIFA's service provider for online monitoring, will have the ability to immediately take down and remove ANY and ALL unauthorized streams of the 2014 FIFA World Cup BrazilTM found on your website," FIFA demanded.
Torrentfreak observed that such proactive approach is unusual to a copyright holder. Also, the letter might have been the first time FIFA has launched such measure in its efforts to curb illegal streaming.
