Illegal Livestreaming: Twitch, Twitter and Facebook, the New Pirate El Dorado?

Watch a hacked football game broadcast on social media for free? They are nearly 2.5 million Internet users, according to estimates by Hadopi, to have become accustomed to this illegal practice in 2020. They should therefore still be numerous this Tuesday evening to connect to these platforms to follow the second leg of the Manchester City-PSG semi-final. "You have to pay too many subscriptions to follow all the football so I first used the streaming sites but I ended up saturating ads and small windows to close, testifies Thomas, an executive in the industry. textile. I got into the habit of putting myself on Twitter on game nights after discovering in January on my news feed a meeting followed live by 15,000 people. "

Popular for a decade, illegal live streaming sites like RojaDirecta or LShunter have been experiencing a dereferencing and blocking campaign for years at the request of official broadcasters. Users have partly fallen back on IPTV and its packages of pirated channels. "But it is aimed at an informed public with parameters to know and a subscription to pay", analyzes Reef Read, consultant and author of a report for Hadopi on audiovisual and sports piracy. He estimates the shortfall at nearly one billion euros for broadcasters, which endangers the economy of the sector. "On social networks, it's less complicated than you think ...", points out the specialist.

During the first leg between PSG and Manchester City, Facebook Live, Twitch or Twitter hosted live videos of the Champions League match in variable video quality but completely free.

Some only filmed their television connected to the RMC Sport channel, but others broadcast the match by pirating the video stream from the official broadcaster or from a British, Turkish or Qatari channel.

Illegal Twitter broadcasts are followed by tens of thousands of people.

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“Everything that is shown on a screen can be copied and rebroadcast with little computer equipment,” recalls a specialist in the fight against piracy.

Hijacked by specialized cybercriminals, video content is not hosted by digital giants but redirected to these mainstream social networks.

Alerted to this booming phenomenon, the platforms all ensure that their moderation algorithms are hunting down illegal content.

" 

We have a clear copyright policy and respond to reports of suspected copyright violations as a result," says Twitter France.

The platform says it is cleaning up: “This concerns allegations relating to the unauthorized use of a video or a protected image imported via our multimedia hosting services, or to tweets containing links to resources presenting alleged violations.

"

Tools for automatic removal

"We are devoting significant resources to dealing with copyright issues on content broadcast live," said a spokesperson for Facebook. "Rights holders can report problematic videos to us at any time during a live broadcast on Facebook Live," insists Mark Zuckerberg's group.

“Social networks have internal tools to automatically remove them themselves,” confirms Hervé Lemaire, boss of LeakID, a Parisian SME that tracks illegal content for broadcasters in cooperation with platforms. "They use a

fingerprint

or fingerprint system slipped into the code of a video by the owner of the TV rights and transmitted to digital giants like Facebook or YouTube to be automatically detected and blocked in 99% of cases" , he explains.

"The

fingerprint

technique

is certainly less developed in live sport than for pirated cultural content, but broadcasting is more and more often interrupted upstream", abounds Pauline Blassel, general secretary of Hadopi.

"Platform technologies are also capable of recognizing in a video whether it is a match, certain players or the ads linked to a competition and of removing them automatically," she adds.

Holes in the racket

However, video livestreams pass through the cracks, especially on Twitter, as we were able to see and have it quantified during last week's match.

“We identified more than 2,500 explicit messages that requested or offered streaming videos.

About fifteen accounts with 3000 to 5000 followers shared the same link ”, assures Paul Merveilleux du Vignaux, digital analyst for the communication agency Majorelle who developed Lucy, a precise analysis tool for the platform.

"Several hundred videos are still detected and intercepted at each match thanks to the moderation of our teams because automation is not everything", confirms Hervé Lemaire, the manager of LeakID, which has the main European championships and broadcasters as clients.

Up to 300,000 euros fine

The lifespan of these illegal broadcasts varies depending on the platform when they are alerted. It takes a maximum of 5 minutes to remove a video on Twitch, 5 to 10 minutes for a Facebook Live, and around 30 minutes to remove a broadcast via Twitter Live or a redirect link to an illegal streaming site. But the game of cat and mouse still seems complicated to win for good. "The deleted Twitter accounts have backup accounts to come back in a few minutes," smiles our witness who sometimes juggles several broadcasters during a match.

Viewing illegal streaming content is not yet punishable by law, but broadcasting pirated video is punishable by 3 years' imprisonment and a fine of € 300,000.

Legal uncertainty surrounds the principle of retweeting or sharing this illegal content on another platform.

"We must tackle the source of the videos that land on social networks and block the services that broadcast illegal streaming directly from the servers," advocates Pauline Blassel, of Hadopi.

This is the meaning of a bill examined in the National Assembly before the summer and which will give more means of blocking by drawing inspiration from strategies which have proved their worth in Portugal and England.

Just in time for the resumption of the season?