THE FIFA World Cup 2022 starts in November, but some media companies are already worried about pirated broadcasts of the games. One of them is Bell Media. Anticipating the problem, the company filed a lawsuit to ban two IPTV services in Canada with a history of illegally broadcasting major sporting events.

Bell Media is a Canadian-based media conglomerate. The company owns a sports channel called The Sports Network (TSN) which owns the streaming rights to World Cup matches.

As they operate illegally, the two IPTV services targeted by the lawsuit do not have official names. But one is known to have servers in the British Virgin Islands, Russia, and the UK. These are operated by providers based in the Virgin Islands and Ukraine.

The second has servers located in Belize (a country bordering Guatemala) which are operated by a provider in the same country.

Both services stream TV content through various websites and link aggregators to sports broadcasts. It is for this reason that it is not easy to block these addresses. One site may even be taken down, but others seem to continue with pirated streaming.

According TorrentFreak, Bell Media is not alone in trying to stop pirated IPTV services from broadcasting World Cup matches. CTV Specialty Television and Réseau des Sports are also part of the process.

What do these companies want?

As it has already become clear, it is difficult to remove sites that provide the content of illegal IPTV services. That’s why the aforementioned media companies have gone to the Federal Court in Montreal to seek an injunction compelling internet service providers to block access to illegal servers.

These companies also want to be compensated for illegal IPTV services. But again, it’s hard to find them. This is why the focus is on the lock request. To this end, the IP companies provided the Canadian authorities with a list of IP addresses linked to the hacked servers.

Not that this type of action is new. O TorrentFreak explains that the Canadian courts approved the first blocking order for hacked addresses four years ago. At the time, most providers blocked it with no questions asked.

Most, not all. ISP TekSavvy valiantly resisted the order, arguing that the blocking threatened the open internet. At the time, Andy Kaplan-Myrth, the company’s vice president of regulatory affairs, said the injunction would lead to more blocking requests in the future.

Apparently Kaplan-Myrth was right in his prediction.

It is clear that the injunction, if issued, will have no impact on Brazil. But since the country is among those who consume the most content through illegal IPTV services, it is good to keep an eye on this movement.

It will not be surprising if television channels or organizations linked to media groups here also anticipate events and demand the blocking of IP addresses linked to pirated streaming services.