Premier League Subpoena Requires Cloudflare to Unmask Streaming Pirates

Piracy poses a major threat to the Premier League's broadcast rights, prompting it to take continued action against rogue streaming sites. Hoping to unmask the anonymous operators behind dozens of pirate sites, the league has obtained a DMCA subpoena against Cloudflare in the United States. While Cloudflare is expected to comply, the usability of the information it holds remains uncertain.

premier leagueAs England’s top football competition, the Premier League draws hundreds of millions of viewers from all over the world.

Aside from the sportive stakes, the Premier League also has a vested interest in selling broadcast rights. These rights generate billions of pounds in revenue per year; a staggering amount unmatched by any other football league.

Yet, other leagues are not the main threat to these broadcast revenues. Instead, piracy has emerged as the Premier League’s main nemesis, as many football fans turn to cheaper pirate streaming services to watch ‘the people’s game’.

In recent years, the Premier League has tried several legal avenues to tackle the piracy problem. In addition to obtaining blocking orders in multiple countries, the organization has been a driving force behind several lawsuits, some of which resulted in prison sentences.

Cloudflare & Pirate Sites

While the football league typically finds the law on its side, identifying its ‘opponents’ isn’t always easy. Operators of streaming sites and services are typically aware of the legal risks and do their best to remain anonymous. Presumably as part of this strategy, they use services made available by Cloudflare.

Cloudflare doesn’t make the operators of piracy sites ‘anonymous’ but it does shield their hosting locations from public view. Rightsholders can overcome this barrier through formal complaints, after which Cloudflare identifies the hosting services. To obtain additional information, however, rightsholders have to go to court.

A few days ago, the Premier League took this follow-up step by asking a California federal court to issue a DMCA subpoena. The request identifies 38 target pirate streaming sites, many of which use multiple domains. Through the court the Premier League hopes to identify the persons connected to these domains.

Premier League Requests Action

Before going to court, the Premier League’s American law firm, Hagan Noll & Boyle, sent a takedown notice to Cloudflare, asking it to terminate a few dozen accounts that are deemed problematic.

“Cloudflare is asked to remove or disable access to Premier League’s copyrighted works, which, based on the infringement that has occurred to date through the websites and domain names identified above, will continue to be infringed in this same manner throughout the Premier League season,” the law firm wrote.

The letter identifies the streaming site domains, some of which redirect to other domains. In addition, there’s a ‘backend’ link pointing out where the pirated football streams for these sites are being sourced.

Letter to Cloudflare

epl
Several of the targeted domains use the .CFD gTLD, which is targeted at clothing brands and fashion houses, but also seems popular among a subset of pirate site operators. Others use more generic .com, .org and .tv domains.

One of the streaming sites

epl stream
At first glance, totalsportek.space appears to be the most popular domain name, with more than 17 million visits in February, according to SimilarWeb.

Cloudflare Must Identify Operators

The Premier League’s letter didn’t result in the termination of any Cloudflare accounts. Totalsportek.space and others remain online, using Cloudflare’s services, but the California federal court did sign off on the DMCA subpoena.

The subpoena requires Cloudflare to hand over information that can help to identify the associated account holders, including any names, physical addresses, IP addresses, telephone numbers, email addresses, payment information, account updates, and account histories.

Known to comply with these subpoenas, Cloudflare is required to hand over the requested information before April 3. Whether the Premier League will find any of the information usable is another matter. Many pirate site owners use inaccurate data, and financial trails can quickly reach a dead end.

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The subpoena

dmca subpoena
A copy of the issued DMCA subpoena is available here (pdf) and the Premier League’s declaration can be found here (pdf). Below is a list of all the targeted domain names.

– 90phut2.info
– 310.tv —> 310002.tv
– 808fubo.com
– keelalive.com
– 926.tv —> 926002.tv
– ball24.tv
– banhkhuc37.info
– baygonhero.com
– cakhia34.xyz/cakhia54.xyz —> cakhia60.xyz
– dollarformergm3hp.shop/fightfloorwt4ea5l.shop —> singlevariousht1etk0.sbs
– freestreams-live.my —> freestreams-live.mp
– gavang.link/gavang4.tv/gavang5.tv/gavang6.tv —> gavang13.live
– gavang.org
– glisco.link —> coolrea.link
– jala1.cc —> jalaace2.cc
– livetv819.me —> livetv822.me
– mgviagrtoomuch.com
– sporttuna.pro —> sporttuna.website —> sporttuna.xyz
– propermirrorc6rrhjf.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– rbtv77.com —> howfruitsizmx.cfd
– rbtv77.ws —> rbtv77.my —> happenedought1tzn2s.cfd
– strugglesincetfp9ek.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– taraftarium.co
– taraftarium.me —> aleaquefootball.com
– thapcam53.buzz —> thapcam.pro —> thapcam53.fyi
– totalsportek.space —> xsportbox.com
– twentytemperature7jigpx.shop —> singlevariousht1etk0.sbs
– unusualscience6ezlg79.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– vachvoi.net —> vachvoi.tv
– vebo3.site
– watchsportnow.com
– wincanaldcocv1.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– wrongfoughtizki7zm.cfd —> shakingfoota7okr5.cfd
– xoilac34.info
– zhiboche.tv —> zhiboche8.com —> 176001.tv
– zhibodou.com —> sportsteam356.com
– zonadeporteshd.pl
– zvision.link