Sports Leagues See ‘X’ as the ‘Home of Social Media Piracy’

Several prominent football leagues and organizations, including UEFA, the Premier League, and LaLiga, have sent a letter to X urging the social media platform to take live-streaming piracy more seriously. Supported by broadcasters, they are demanding more advanced anti-piracy features. According to the letter, lack of enforcement has turned X into the home of social media piracy.

x twitterSimilar to other user-generated content platforms, X allows people to freely share content online.

This includes text, images, music, video, and live streams. In some cases, content is shared by users of X without first obtaining permission from rightsholders.

Over the years, various parties have called out Twitter/X over alleged copyright infringement. Research published by the EU Intellectual Property Office found that X is rife with piracy-related discussions. U.S. lawmakers, meanwhile, suggested that piracy is part of the company’s business model.

Last year, these complaints resulted in a lawsuit, filed by the major music labels. The companies accused Elon Musk’s X Corp of “breeding” mass copyright infringement and demanded damages, which could reach $250 million. The lawsuit continues as copyright pressure continues to build.

Sports Leagues and Broadcasters Demand Action
This week, AP reported that a group of sports leagues and broadcasters had contacted X CEO Linda Yaccarino, urging the platform to take live-streaming piracy more seriously. The letter, signed by the Premier League, LaLiga, Bundesliga, Serie A, UEFA, CONMEBOL, DAZN, Sky, beIN, DirecTV and Movistar Plus+, claims that the platform is falling short on its enforcement actions.

X is legally obliged to process DMCA takedown notices. While the company stopped releasing transparency reports after Elon Musk took over, the company hasn’t halted this practice. However, the letter, which appears to address Musk too, suggests that technical support for rightsholders decreased after he acquired Twitter.

“X’s approach to taking down unlawful live content notified to them is woefully insufficient and inadequate,” the letter notes. “Critically, since you acquired the platform, we have witnessed a demoralizing reduction in technical support making it ever more difficult to engage with the platform in any kind of meaningful discussion on this topic.”

‘X: The Home of Social Media Piracy’
While all social media platforms have to deal with piracy, the letter complains that X’s response to the problem falls short. This, purportedly, gives pirates the idea that they can abuse the platform without serious repercussions.

According to the rightsholders, the problem is getting worse, evidenced by an increased number of pirated live-streams on the platform. At the same time, moderation efforts have reportedly decreased.

“X is increasingly the home of unlawful social media piracy,” the letter reads.

The rightsholders are calling for a meeting with X to discuss these matters. Ideally, they want X to turn the tide by taking piracy more seriously, while meeting its obligations under the Digital Services Act. No concrete measures are mentioned, but the DSA calls for increased takedown transparency and prioritizing takedowns by ‘trusted flaggers’.

META and YouTube Do Better
The AP hasn’t released the letter in full, so it’s unknown whether it includes more concrete demands. What’s clear, however, is that X stands out in comparison to other platforms, with rightsholders stating that it “lacks many of the features which other responsible social media operators deploy to combat piracy.”

This notion is supported by Cameron Andrews, Legal Director at BeIN, who addressed X’s shortcomings in a BroadcastPro article yesterday.

“While some of the big players like META and YouTube have worked with rights owners to reduce the availability of pirated live content on their platforms, others like X, are doing very little,” Andrews writes.

During the Euro 2024 football championship this summer, BeIN identified 1,198 illegal streams, with hundreds of thousands of unauthorized viewers tuning in. Ideally, these streams should be shut down near instantly.

“In the absence of any effective cooperation from X, there is very little that rights owners can do to prevent the massive abuse of broadcast rights in this way,” BeIN’s anti-piracy director notes.

Just how receptive X is to this critique has yet to be seen. The company hasn’t officially commented on the matter, and Elon Musk hasn’t weighed in yet either. However, he previously made it clear that he’s not a fan of broad takedown measures.