Author: tio

The FIFA World Cup generates billions of dollars in broadcast rights revenue, making it one of the most valuable sporting events on the planet.

With the tournament in full swing, rightsholders are doing all they can to crack down on pirate sites and services.

Most of this enforcement takes place behind the scenes, through site blocking efforts and takedown notices, for example. This activity is typically picked up by broadcasters, but over the past day we also noticed a series of takedown actions appearing to come from FIFA directly.

FIFA Takedown Notices

While browsing through the Lumen Database, the transparency tool maintained by Harvard that archives copyright complaints, we spotted dozens of recent DMCA takedown notices that were sent to Google, listing “FIFA World Cup” as the sender.

FIFA has engaged in anti-piracy activities in the past, so the action doesn’t come as a surprise. However, the boilerplate language used in the notices stands out for various reasons.

For example, the targeted sites are accused of using “unauthorized brand configurations, proprietary digital layout assets, and trademarked media frames” to impersonate FIFA’s official platforms in Google Search results.

This appears to be a rather convoluted way to note that the pirate sites are using FIFA’s intellectual property without permission. Also, terms such as “brand configurations,” “trademarked media frames,” and “proprietary brand identity” are trademark concepts, which are typically not handled through copyright takedown notices.

AI-Generated?

It doesn’t stop there. The notices further claim that the pirate sites deploy “automated database scrapers and programmatic indexing matrices” to capture search traffic, and that “cloaked link structures” are “engineered explicitly to hijack our organic search footprint.”

This type of language is not something we see every day. In fact, the question remains whether it is written by an actual person. The reputable AI-checker tool Pangram clearly has its doubts, labeling it 100% AI-generated.

Full-domain Removal

The demands made in these takedown notices are not imaginary. However, these go well beyond what we typically see in a takedown notice. Instead of merely asking for the removal of the listed URLs, ‘FIFA’ wants Google to delist full domains.

“We request the complete, permanent de-indexing of this root domain and all its subdirectories from Google Search,” the notices read.

This type of demand goes well beyond what a DMCA takedown notice is intended for. While Google does remove full domain names in response to site blocking orders, DMCA takedown notices typically don’t warrant such a drastic remedy.

Over the past several days, more than 40 DMCA takedown notices were filed, identifying domain names including beststreameast.xyz, falconstreams.net, footybite1.live, streameastnow.net, streamiz.click and us-sport.eu.

How Google classifies these notices is unknown, but it does not appear to have fully delisted the domains. None of the URLs we checked triggered the standard DMCA removal notice in the search results, suggesting that these URLs were not removed either. Alternatively, these URLs were not indexed at all.

Who is Behind This?

The URL lists themselves raise further questions, as the “FIFA World Cup” notices do not stop at flagging FIFA content. The notices also target other sports with no obvious connection to the World Cup, including the NBA, Formula 1, NFL, WWE, and many others.

Given all the open questions and the unusual approach, we doubt whether FIFA is indeed behind these notices. The AI-generated boilerplate language, trademark complaints in a DMCA notice, and URLs of completely unrelated sports, are not what you would expect of a reputable organization.

TorrentFreak contacted FIFA to ask whether the organization, or a vendor acting on its behalf, submitted the notices. At the time of writing, no response has come in yet.

But if this isn’t FIFA, who is behind these notices then?

We can only speculate, but we have seen similar tactics in the past. In this case, that would mean that the operator of a pirate streaming site tries to get higher ranking competitors removed from Google search.

Whether these DMCA notices represent FIFA’s own enforcement operation or an attempt to exploit FIFA’s name during the world’s most-watched sporting event has yet to be seen. In any case, it shows that these types of broad takedown efforts deserve some serious scrutiny.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.