14 DAY TRIAL // UK judges extended the country's infamous Piracy Blocklist with three new sports streaming sites: Rojadirecta, LiveTV, and Drakulastream. These come to add to an already previously blocked sports streaming service, FirstRow Sports.
The whole conundrum started in 2012 when various companies in accordance with the Digital Economy Act sued and got any Internet Service Provider with over 400,000 subscribers to block various torrent sharing sites.
The current UK ISPs forced to abide by this ruling are BT Group, EE, Sky Broadband, Talk Talk, and Virgin Media. You may also read about them online under the name "Big 5."
Throughout the years, various other lawsuits followed, and on top of the initial torrent sites, various other types of services were also added to the list.
The first sports streaming website was FirstRow Sports in the summer of 2013 when it was sued by The Football Association and Premier League Limited. That court ruling also allowed the UK football governing to extend and update the list later, which they opted to do this weekend.
Drakulastream also has problems with its domain name
Ernesto, the prodigious TorrentFreak editor, was the first to notice these new additions, along with some problems with the Drakulastream domain.
Apparently, the EURid registry suspended the domain this week, but later reinstated it. Currently, the Drakulastream domain redirects to the Stream Hunter service.
Other sites were also added to the UK Piracy Blocklist the previous week
The aforementioned three sports streaming sites weren't the only addition to the list this week. Ebookee, LibGen, and Freshwap were also added to the list, after a lawsuit from The Publishers Association.
These three sites are a known place for downloading ebooks and audiobooks and are the first services of their type added to the ISP ban list.
The current UK Piracy Blocklist is now 128 websites long, and ISPs have ten days to comply with the recent rulings.
