Less than a month away from the 2022 FIFA World Cup in Qatar, broadcast rights are in the spotlight. beIN Sports Mena took legal action on October 12 and 13, 2022. The Qatari TV complains about pirate sites that violate its exclusive rights to broadcast the English and Spanish football championships. The administrators of the company stream the matches without paying any rights. The Qatari TV channel is however the holder of exclusive licenses with the English Premier League association and the “La Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional” company. Based in London and Madrid respectively, these copyright holders and neighbors are also parties in this case. A summary procedure, meaning an emergency procedure, has been initiated in the commercial courts of Casablanca and Rabat. A first hearing took place on Monday, October 24, 2022. The lawyers for each of the parties declared themselves on behalf of their clients before the judges. Lawyer Zineb Hamzi for the Maroc Telecom carrier and Amine Cherif for Orange, the other telecom carrier. As for Inwi, the third Moroccan carrier, apparently, a representative of its legal department asked for a delay to appoint his counsel. beIN Sports Mena hired the services of Bakouchi & Habachi Law Firm, the goal being the suspension of the broadcasting of matches through these pirate sites. As a result, Moroccan telecom operators are in the line of sight. These internet service providers were notified at their headquarters on Friday, October 21, 2022. Inwi and Orange are located in Casablanca. Itissalat Al-Maghrib is based in Rabat. “The sports channel and its commercial partners are not part of a pure and hard litigation logic. It relies rather on the cooperation of telecom operators”, said a judicial source who wished to remain anonymous. One of the difficulties of this case is that the websites are not static. You suspend their IP address on one side, and they simultaneously emerge on the other. “They regenerate themselves under another IP address and continue to illegally distribute their content from abroad where they have their servers”, explains a specialist in technology law and regulatory law.
It was not so easy to bring this legal action to a successful conclusion. beIN Sports Mena and the other two plaintiffs had to insist on getting their case on track. It was first necessary to obtain the appointment of a legal expert and a process server to establish the facts to support the legal action. The justice department seemed at first taken aback by this request. This type of request on broadcasting rights is not so customary in judicial practice. Also, the economic profile of those called to the bar explains why the various courts of justice passed on the hot potato to each other at the start. Should the civil or commercial courts hear the case? This supposed jurisdictional dispute eventually evaporated. The plaintiffs have been persistent. The justice department asked them to make a request for each pirate site instead of just one, even though they have an almost similar email address. Example: kooora4live.net, kooora4live.com and kooora4live.tv. Despite their reluctance at the beginning, the courts grasped the interest and originality of this case. A first judicial expert was appointed on November 26, 2021 before being replaced, which is almost a year before the first hearing in October 2022. Youness El Handassi was accompanied by a process server during his mission . “Pirates or not, these sites do broadcast the matches of a popular sport. Their users benefit from it without paying any fees. Admittedly, this is a loss of earnings for licensed broadcasters. But it is also a form of democratization of sport whose exploitation rights have reached astronomical sums. It’s a bit like the story of Robin Hood who steals from the rich to give to the poor ”, comments a knowledgeable observer and football fan. Pirate sites make a lot of money on the backs of channels like beIN Sports or Canal Plus, but the general public could not care less...
Faiçal FAQUIHI
