How Google Drive was partially blocked in Italy
29 October 2024
The governing body of Italian football declared war on illegal streams. They consider football fans at fault for not supporting streaming and pay TV, bringing diminishing revenue for both TVs and football clubs due to the ever-growing menace of illegal streams and dodgy box subscriptions. Serie A CEO Luigi De Siervo in an interview with Il Mattino said that "it's a battle for survival of the entire football system." The issue does exist: estimations point to around three million subscribers of illegal IPTV systems in 2022 and a jump of 26% in illegal acts like streaming and sharing content between 2018 and 2022.
Last March, the government approved a piracy shield that came into effect during last week's Serie A matches. It was supposed to block illegal streams using Internet Protocol Television (IPTV) from illegal websites and disable Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) changing the network's location in order to gain access to copyrighted content. However, it ended up blocking VPNs that were not streaming football and disabled most functionalities from Google Drive for everyone in Italy for a good part of last Saturday.
The debacle of the piracy shield underlines a deep-seated misunderstanding of how the internet works from politicians. However, governments are not giving up, as countries like Spain are monitoring Italy's piracy shield for their own domestic leagues, while the UK is also cracking down on illegal streams with IP-targeted blocks.
Meanwhile, fans are left with a growing bill to pay for legally watching matches as rights owners keep raising subscription prices, with ever-shifting match days and bureaucratic hurdles for getting tickets.
 | Giacomo Fracassi "True, I also stream illegally. The prices are insane, you have to pay for too many things at once and as a football fan it's easier for me to do it this way, not that I'm proud of it. I pay for matches when I go to the stadium, but something's gotta give", says Diego (35) from the suburbs of Rome. Criminalising fans while offering a bad, pricey product is not exactly a winning strategy, but it is a convenient way to avoid facing other serious issues in the sector. |
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