The final series that should lead a National Hockey League team to drink champagne from the Stanley Cup begins any day now. And while there will definitely be a winning team, there could be a lot more losers than usual. Because in the shadow of the Stanley Cup will decide these days the future of the Canadian Internet.
The Federal Court has just authorized Bell, Rogers and Quebecor to put in place the necessary mechanisms to block the illegal broadcasting of NHL games on the Internet. As this illegal distribution mostly occurs on sites hosted outside of Canada, the three providers are authorized to make these sites inaccessible from Canada. The judgment allows them to force independent providers to block them too.
Millions of dollars at stake
This is not the first time that such a practice has been permitted. In 2019, Bell and Rogers won the right to cut off access to internet television service GoldTV. The Internet address of this service was immediately blocked. It only took a few days for GoldTV to create a new Internet address to thwart this system.
To prevent this from happening again, the Federal Court will allow Internet providers to “dynamically” block access to illegal webcasts of NHL games. What this means is that a system will be put in place that must be adhered to by all internet service providers in the country and will be continually updated to provide all internet addresses that may be illegally streaming hockey NHL. All Canadian suppliers will have to comply.
It’s a first in Canada, but it’s not a world first. Because “dynamic internet address blocking” is actually the business model of a British company called Friend MTS, which already offers its services to English professional soccer broadcasters in the UK and Ireland.
The three Canadian telecommunications giants have paid millions of dollars to reserve the exclusive right to broadcast these games. Each match day, you can find by searching the Internet dozens of broadcasts of these same matches accessible for free. Fighting this piracy makes sense. It’s big business.
To avoid slippage, the court has indicated that its authorization will cease as soon as the Stanley Cup is won later this month. Anyone wishing to repeat the experience will have to come back before a judge.
Ineffective escalation
The problem, because there is a problem, is that the millions of dollars spent to present the case to the court and then to put in place the mechanisms necessary for the application of these measures risk being wasted in vain. For one simple reason: anyone who wants to access a website blocked by their provider just has to subscribe to a VPN service. VPNs (virtual private networks or private virtual network, in French) hide the online activity of Internet users who use it.
VPNs were, only a few years ago, a gadget known only to a handful of web crackers, but that’s no longer the case. The equivalent of a VPN service can be found onboard mainstream web browsers like Firefox and Safari these days. Freelance VPNs often cost less than five dollars a month and hide a user’s online activity whether they’re on mobile, PC, or even a digital TV receiver (Google Chromecast, Amazon Fire TV, etc.). .).
In fact, VPNs are so well known that even the Federal Court has demanded an independent audit to analyze Internet behavior during NHL Finals games.
As the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), an organization spun off from the Department of Law at the University of Ottawa that advocates for the public interest in Internet issues, writes: If Rogers, Bell and the other media companies that have requested this judgment wish to extend it beyond the 2022 season series, an independent audit must establish that the collateral blocking of legitimate content has been minimal and that this blocking has actually helped to increase the subscription rate to their services, rather than directing Internet users to illegal sources or to the adoption of VPN services. »
In China and Russia, VPNs give citizen opposition a way to bypass barriers and gain access to foreign sites and media. In Canada, VPN services will help determine whether the Internet can be controlled not by the state, but by three companies that already control TV broadcasting and most of the Internet infrastructure, wired or wireless.
Their fears are obviously well-founded — piracy of commercial content is illegal, and it needs to be curbed. The method used is cause for concern. If it were to apply in the future each time a Canadian broadcaster wants to protect its content, will we see a massive movement of Canadian Internet users towards VPNs?
It is said that the Stanley Cup is the most difficult trophy to win in all professional sports. Let’s hope that the victory this spring does not make millions of losers.