Spanish Court ruling means fines for people watching illegal streams

According to reports in the Spanish media, a ruling by a judge in Commercial Court Number eight Barcelona, means that viewers of illegal streams in Spain can now be tracked and ordered to pay a fine.

Specifically anyone found illegally streaming the top Spanish football league, La Liga, can now be traced and fined.

The court ruling means that internet providers, like Movistar, Vodafone, Orange, MasMovil, will have to supply La Liga with the details of users who connect to servers that are streaming La Liga matches without paying the legal subscription to whatever broadcasters might provide coverage of its games where you live.

President of La Liga, Javier Tebas Medrano said the ‘issue is simple’, saying: “In an order it has been decreed that TV operators are obliged to give LaLiga clients who connect to certain IP addresses that we will provide them.”

The court order says: “There are reasonable indications that content, works or services subject to the audiovisual rights of La Liga are being made available or disseminated directly or indirectly without respecting the provisions of the Intellectual Property Law.”

It goes on: “It cannot be considered that the registered illegal activity associated with the identified IPs has been carried out by consumers in good faith and without the intention of obtaining economic or commercial benefits.”

It says that those watching La Liga illegally can expect to be traced in the following ways:

– IP address assigned to the user when they accessed the Server that enabled the audiovisual content to be shared unlawfully;

– Name and surname of the holder of the Internet access service contract;

– Postal address of the [internet] line installation and billing details; and

– Identification document [NIF, NIE, other] regarding the information of the IP Address of the server to which you have connected, port of the server to which you have connected, and time of the request (GMT+0).

Medrano says that those found through the new court order will not be ‘fined’ but rather given ‘damages’ to pay because it is ‘illegal to consume this content for free’.

It is unclear if this is covering just cardsharing, and or IPTV services., or how people using VPNs will be covered.

Something similar started late last year in Italy, where viewers can be fined up to 5000 euros. And you can expect other football leagues, like the Premier League in the UK, to be watching carefully to see if these measures help curb illegal streaming.