Football Fans Turn Pirate as Another Legal Streaming Service Falls Over

To divert people away from piracy, legal streaming services warn of the unreliability of illegal streaming sites. But for the third time in a matter of weeks, football fans have been unable to watch key matches due to legal platforms falling over. As one fan wrote on Twitter: if I pay for a legal service that doesn’t work and can find a pirate stream in less than a minute, why am I paying?

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

footballLegal streaming services offering access to top tier football in Europe have a few unique selling points over piracy platforms.

Perhaps most importantly, people who subscribe to legal services help to keep the game alive. They support the clubs they love, they support the players, and allow broadcasters to get a return on the money they invested in TV rights.

And make no mistake, TV rights are far from cheap.

On the downside, legal sports streaming services are very expensive, some would say disproportionately so. They can easily cost ten times the amount of a pirate service, despite the latter providing at least ten times more channels – x10. But at least legal services are more reliable than pirate offerings – in theory.

You Had One Job…..

Mid-August we reported on remarkable situations in both Spain and Italy. At the start of the new season, after football leagues LaLiga and Serie A had warned fans not to use pirate IPTV services, fans who paid to access legal services found that they couldn’t watch matches due to technical issues.

For multi-billion dollar corporations, not being able to get matches to paying fans wasn’t a particularly good look, especially when pirate services were able to carry on business as usual.

But those two events were a one-off, or a two-off if we’re being picky. Until this week at least, when fans in France were treated to a similar experience.

Canal+ Couldn’t Keep Up With Demand

On Wednesday evening, France’s PSG faced off against Italian giants Juventus in the UEFA Champions League. PSG eventually came away with the spoils having won two goals to one. The match was available on Canal+ – or at least that was the plan.

Users who logged in early apparently had no issues but for those who tried to tune in just before the game started, things didn’t go nearly as smoothly. Just minutes after kickoff, Canal+ used Twitter to explain that it was unable to cope with the number of people trying to log in to the myCANAL app.

canal-apology

In keeping with football tradition, it only seems appropriate to criticize from the comfort of the touchlines (or couch), perhaps along the lines of: “So why did you sell that many subscriptions?” But that would, of course, be a little unfair – the unexpected can happen to anyone.

Unfortunately, an hour later Canal+ was back on Twitter again, this time with a red-faced emoji, having failed to sort out the mess, with half the match gone.

canal-apology2

“Will it work again at 10:46 p.m.? What a shame! Refund the subscription! And tomorrow night, we do it again?” a frustrated fan responded. “We haven’t seen anything of the game. It’s nice to pay 50 bucks a month not to see the match you pay for,” complained another.

About Those Unreliable Pirate Streams….

People who didn’t pay to watch the match legally (and some that probably did) had no problem finding it through unauthorized channels. It was a conundrum outlined by a Twitter user who tweeted directly at Canal+ while its service was inaccessible. In summary: why am I paying you anything?

canal down

A report on Radio France reveals that pirates had plenty of choice.

“At half-time, we found that 50,000 spectators were following PSG’s first Champions League match via a Twitter account. Another live channel has nearly 6,000 views, more than double that for another. These figures were probably boosted by the MyCanal bug, which prevented subscribers from legally following the meeting,” the publication reveals.

According to the publication, Twitter did take some streams down but they reappeared in new tweets just a few minutes later and the reporter was able to watch the entire second half without any interruption. But the problem – or solution for myCANAL users – wasn’t confined to Twitter. Plenty of tweets linked to Telegram channels, where the match was also available.

“By following these links, we then came across a live stream, followed by more than 45,000 spectators. Within minutes, we were able to join nearly a dozen different conversations to watch the game,” Radio France adds.

The bottom line is that if legal services can’t get it right, illegal services are ready to step in and do their job for them. And the last thing legal services need is pirates playing the hero, because that never ends well.

From: TF, for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Forget all you know and lose yourself in the first trailer for Willow

“Running! Horses! Mayhem! Mayhem! Happy kissy ending!”

Warwick Davis is returning as the Nelwyn dwarf sorcerer in the new Disney+ series Willow.

The 1988 fantasy film Willow was under-appreciated in its day, but it's now a fantasy cult classic. Disney+ is betting on the strength of its nostalgic appeal with the new fantasy series Willow, set decades after the events of the first film. And now we have an official trailer, which debuted at D23 Expo.

As we've reported previously, the original Willow was directed by Ron Howard, and it told the story of a child with a rune birthmark who was prophesied to bring about the downfall of the evil sorceress Queen Bavmorda. The child was set afloat on a grass raft and found by a village of little people (the Nelwyn). A Nelwyn dwarf sorcerer named Willow led a party to find a community of Daikini (tall people) to raise the baby. Many magical adventures ensued.

The Oscar-nominated film debuted to mixed critical reviews, but made a decent showing at the box office, earning $137.6 million globally—even though it never became the blockbuster hit producer George Lucas had hoped it would be. Lucas and Davis had discussed the possibility of a sequel series as early as 2005, but Disney+ didn't give the project the green light until October 2020, with Howard on board as an executive producer.

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GNOME Shell for mobile Linux reimagines how a smartphone UI can work

The GNOME desktop environment is one of the most popular user interfaces and suites of apps available for desktop Linux distributions. Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems. G…

The GNOME desktop environment is one of the most popular user interfaces and suites of apps available for desktop Linux distributions. Now a team of developers have been working to bring GNOME to mobile devices running Linux-based operating systems. GNOME Shell for mobile provides a touch-friendly user interface optimized for smartphones and tablets. And while […]

The post GNOME Shell for mobile Linux reimagines how a smartphone UI can work appeared first on Liliputing.

Google and Amazon want more defense contracts, despite worker protests

Protesters oppose Israeli government contract they say could have military uses.

A Project Nimbus cloud contract with the Israeli government has some Google and Amazon workers upset.

Enlarge / A Project Nimbus cloud contract with the Israeli government has some Google and Amazon workers upset. (credit: Bloomberg via Getty Images)

Hundreds of Google workers and their supporters gathered near the company's downtown San Francisco offices Thursday, raising signs that read "No Tech for Apartheid" and filling the air with chants of "Tech from Amazon and Google! You can't claim that you are neutral!"

Similar scenes unfolded outside Google and Amazon offices in New York and Seattle, and a Google office in Durham, North Carolina. Google and Amazon employees were joined at the rallies by tech workers from other companies and Palestinian rights organizations. They all convened to protest Project Nimbus, Google and Amazon's cloud computing contract with the Israeli government.

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The rest of PAX West 2022’s standout indie games: Rhythm madness, bloody combat

Without big companies like Microsoft, Sony, indies had more room to shine.

The Nintendo corner of PAX West 2022; it's hard to get a full photo of the entire show floor, especially one that includes all eight games profiled in the article below.

Enlarge / The Nintendo corner of PAX West 2022; it's hard to get a full photo of the entire show floor, especially one that includes all eight games profiled in the article below. (credit: ReedPOP)

SEATTLE—In-person video game conventions are back! Kind of!

Nerdy conventions and other physical events began reappearing in public halls late last year, though what a difference a year makes. PAX West 2021 was my first in-person convention since the COVID-19 pandemic began, but the event was a ghost town, full of empty, blacked-out spaces and massive gaps in the cast of showcasing companies. Last week's PAX West 2022, on the other hand, finally felt like the real deal, and it was fortunately met by a vigilant, mask-wearing crowd.

Some gaming companies have apparently moved on from local convention participation, with Microsoft and Sony not hosting PAX West booths (though each had a presence at last month's boisterous Gamescom 2022 in Cologne, Germany). Hence, this post-PAX "coolest upcoming games" feature is far from comprehensive, owing as much to missing companies as to specific games not demoing well in packed convention halls. Even so, we played enough diverse fare to feel comfortable shouting out solid PAX West highlights.

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