By: Charlotte Golnik
Recent studies show that the average American spent $552 on streaming subscriptions in 2023 with 44% facing cost increases. Many bypassed high costs, evidenced by the 141 billion visits to unauthorized streaming platforms (“pirate platforms”). Among those platforms is StreamEast, which promises users “hassle-free and completely free” access to nearly all live sports events, even in the setting of their recent five-domain-seizure. If sports networks and the U.S. Government successfully tackle live sports pirate platforms, StreamEast’s 15 million monthly users will need to find alternative sources for live sports viewing. But will this truly reduce the consumption of pirated live sports streams?
The Copyright Act of 1976 “grant[ed] copyright holders ‘exclusive rights’ to make copies of their work, distribute it and perform it publicly,” but it alone would not address internet-based copyright infringements. When the communicative internet emerged, Congress responded by amending existing copyright law with the Digital Millenium Copyright Act in 1998 (“DMCA”). The DMCA created the notice and takedown system, to shield internet service providers (“ISP”) from liability for their users’ copyright infringements. This system requires copyright holders to notify ISPs of potential copyright infringements and gives alleged infringers time to respond before permanent removal. If alleged infringers respond, they often delay their responses, sometimes for days. Unfortunately, this process fails to consider the nature of live sports, where value is bound to immediacy.
More than two decades after the DMCA and following Congress’s rejection of other anti-piracy bills, the Consolidated Appropriations Act of 2021 introduced the Protecting Lawful Streaming Act (“PLSA”). The PLSA increased criminal penalties for unauthorized streaming from a misdemeanor to a felony. While unauthorized streaming remains a copyright infringement, the PLSA targets large-scale pirate platforms (instead of individual users) that “willfully and for commercial advantage or private financial gain, illegally stream copyrighted material”. Prior to the PLSA, public performance copyright infringement, which includes streaming, was penalized as a misdemeanor. The PLSA finally granted copyright holders a more appropriate path to address their pirate platform problem.
As copyright holders and the Federal Government sought better ways to prosecute internet copyright infringement, the internet and its users continued advancing their capabilities. Improved internet user competency reduces search costs because they can quickly and easily locate desired streaming content. Consequently, more sports fans are shifting from cable to internet streaming, with projections of 118 million sports-streaming viewers in the United States by 2025. Although numerous legal streaming platforms exist, they impose increasingly strict subscription policies and rising costs lead to subscription fatigue, where users must subscribe to multiple streaming platforms and pay exorbitant prices to avoid streaming pirated material. As a result, adept internet users will tend to turn to pirated streams, as long as the search costs for pirated material are less than the actual costs of legal subscription services.
Sports fans’ excessive monthly subscription payments and StreamEast’s loyalty to its users drive the site to keep its streaming platform available, although it also profits from ads. A StreamEast administrator reported that sports enthusiasts who want viewing access to all sporting events would need to spend nearly $1,500 per month on authorized streaming subscriptions, a steep price compared to the minimal search cost for a skillful internet user who can easily find multiple live sports pirate platforms with just a few clicks. When StreamEast received DMCA “requests” before its recent five-domain-seizure, StreamEast continued providing live pirated sports by simply changing ISPs. Despite the Homeland Security Investigations’ (HSI) seizure of five StreamEast domains in August 2024, StreamEast immediately launched new mirror domains for its users to access the same content, seemingly undeterred by potential PLSA-imposed felonies. StreamEast also vowed on X that its “streams will never go offline” as it expertly utilizes “decoy streams,” “self[-]replicating private servers,” and numerous domains (purportedly “more than Apple and Google combined[]”). Unsurprisingly, StreamEast plans to appeal the seizure warrant.
Federal legislation has made some progress in protecting copyright interests in live sports streaming, but it cannot compete with ultramodern internet development and its sophisticated pirates. For live sports rightsholders, the DMCA notice and takedown process is too slow, and the PLSA’s deterrence measures have had minimal effect on pirate sports platform operators. Both Acts fail to address the reality that live sports rightsholders’ interests hinge on the value of the sporting event, which directly depends on the real-time nature of sports broadcasting: when the shot clock reaches zero, so does the game’s value.
Despite legislation and rightsholders blaming live sports pirate platforms and their users, legal live sports streaming platforms have brought about their own downfall. Due to ineffective legislation, the vast reach of the internet, and the persistence of sports streamers, live sports rightsholders have two choices: either lower the actual costs of legal live sports streams below the search costs of pirated content or accept that live sports pirate platforms will continue to prosper.
As long as the actual costs of legal live sports streaming remain far higher than the search costs of their pirated counterpart, fans will demand, and pirate platforms will supply free, copyright-infringing live sports streams. Contrary to what live sports rightsholders might believe, the ball has always been in their court.
Student Bio: Charlotte Golnik is a second-year law student at Suffolk University Law School. She is a staff writer on the Journal of High Technology Law and is Events Co-Chair of the Women’s Law Association on the Events Committee. Charlotte received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Linguistics from The Ohio State University in 2018 and a Master of Arts in Forensic Linguistics from Hofstra University in 2022.
Disclaimer: The views expressed in this blog are the views of the author alone and do not represent the views of JHTL or Suffolk University Law School.
