Millions across the Americas have accessed illegal broadcasts of sports matches this year. In recent years, many have done so through the ‘Fútbol Libre” website, which consolidated itself lately as one of the most popular illegal streaming platforms of sporting events in Latin America.
But last month, around the time that Colombia and Uruguay kicked off in the semi-final of the 2024 Copa América, users found the site had been shuttered. Soon after, the arrest of the website’s creator, a 23-year-old young man from Mendoza known as ‘Kahsad,’ was disclosed.
A group of powerful companies were behind the push to close Fútbol Libre, a site which operated across multiple domains and servers, which hindered its tracking and final elimination. Images of matches purchased by DirecTV television company, a major player in the region, had been streamed by Fútbol Libre and another similar site, Megadeportes for years.
The defendant in the case is now facing a sentence of up to six years in prison, according to Argentina’s cybercrime prosecutor Alejandro Musso, who is overseeing the case. “Some four or five months ago, a large programming company, which owns the digital rights to football here in Argentina, reported that its signal was being stolen and was being played for free across the country,” explained the court prosecutor in a radio interview.
Musso confirmed that the initial report had been filed by the Alianza Contra la Piratería Audiovisual (Alliance against Audiovisual Piracy), which he defined as “an association protecting the copyright of many companies at an international level.” On its website, the group defines itself as a “not-for-profit organisation aimed at fighting all modes of piracy, which generate a loss not only to the detriment of the industry but also of governments.”
Musso also revealed that the investigation started a few months ago, when it was detected that one of the matches where Boca faced Nacional Potosí for the Copa Sudamericana had been streamed live to hundreds of thousands of people on a website.
“It had over 4,200,000 views outside the pay system,” he highlighted, stating that the exclusive rights to these matches had been purchased by DirecTV.
Regarding the detainee, he specified that he is a young political science student from Godoy Cruz, Mendoza Province, who has “quite a bit of knowledge of IT.” But, to the prosecutor’s surprise, he only owned an average computer and no great technology.
“The youngster is not wealthy, but he is part of a cog where there are people above him selling advertising. Before the users of these sites could access the match they wanted to see, many ads from companies linked to the match and sports betting popped up,” explained Musso. “That is how the medium makes money.”
The crime ‘Kahsad,’ the alleged creator of Fútbol Libre, faces is similar to fraud or theft. Depending on the aggravating circumstances, he could receive a prison sentence of between one month and six years if found guilty.
The anti-piracy entity that filed the initial complaint groups together the industry’s leading players in Latin America, including DirecTV Latinoamérica, SimpleTV (Venezuela) and SKY Brasil, as well as other programmers of pay television signals and contents producers as Warner Bros, Discovery and The Walt Disney Company.
The list includes “La Liga, Grupo Globo, Win Sports, Telecine, 1190 (Perú) and Ole Distribution (representative of channels A&E Networks, NBCUniversal, Sony and IVC),” according to its website.
The Alianza Contra la Piratería Audiovisual also includes professional football leagues, such as the Argentine First Division-Professional League. Industry associations such as Nagra Kudelski, the ABTA Brazilian Association of Pay TV and the CAPPSA Chamber of Producers and Programmers of Audiovisual Signals also participate in the powerful group.
Martín Becerra, a professor and researcher with the CONICENT scientific research institute who specialises in the media, described piracy as “ one more problem of the industry, which cannot account for digitalisation and they ways we have to view content.”
In an interview with the Urbana Play station, he said that “a thousand sites like Fútbol Libre will thrive if the audiovisual industry does not get to work.”
Internationally, other well-known websites are also starting to fall as the industry’s leading firms get to grips with broadcasting felons.
In 2022, Igor Seoane, the founder of the Spanish-language streaming website RojaDirecta, which also broadcast top-tier football matches to international audiences, was sentenced to two years in prison and ordered to pay a fine of 500,000 euros for piracy offences.
That legal push was strongly supported by LaLiga, Spain’s top-tier football division which is a member of the anti-piracy alliance. The league based in claim in the violation of intellectual property violation, since the site included links to illegal websites where all kinds of sporting events were broadcast.
– TIMES/PERFIL
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