How the Olympics and pirates are engaged in a cat-and-mouse game

Once every four years, the International Olympic Committee and pirates engage in a tussle for supremacy.

It’s one of the world’s billboard moments in the sporting calendar, as more than 10,500 athletes descend on Paris for the 2024 Summer Olympics. With records broken and sporting achievements continuing to be demonstrated, it’s little wonder that so many people choose to watch the Olympics.

According to the Olympics themselves, more than 350,000 hours of events will be broadcast from the games on TV and streaming services, with billions of people watching.

But while many will watch the sporting prowess legally, there are many who will choose to watch the event whichever way possible – not always through official means. The issue is compounded by the increasing move to put many events behind a paywall, the result of the International Olympic Committee, which runs the competition, choosing to sell off rights to pay TV providers.

Warner Brothers Discovery bought the European TV rights to the 2024 Games for a reported €1.3 billion in 2015. This means that broadcasters that used to show the Olympics in full, such as the UK’s BBC, are limited in what they show. The BBC can only show a small selection of live action a day, meaning people may miss out on their favorite events.

Enter the pirates

Into the void, piracy starts to play a role. So far in this Olympics, the International Olympic Committee has sent takedown notices to Google, reported through Lumen, either directly or through their piracy takedown provider, Friend MTS.

The majority of the takedowns have been targeted at streaming sites, which stands in stark contrast to the IOC’s previous approach, which has been to target torrent providers. The changing approach suggests that the way people access pirated content is changing to reflect a move away from torrenting and towards simple live streaming.

In all, nearly 6,000 URLs have been flagged to Google as breaching the DMCA – or Digital Millennium Copyright Act, a copyright law that protects rightsholders from unauthorized use of their content.

The shift towards live streaming makes sense, given that one of the main reasons people will be turning to piracy is because of the absence of live coverage of their chosen sport through legal means. Research prior to the games suggests that up to 50 million people could choose to pirate content in Europe alone during the Olympics.

Takedown notices

The International Olympic Committee’s takedown notices accompanying its requests to Google and Lumen to remove links and content from its results are clear – and polite – about what they expect, and why they’re asking for content to be delisted. “Please note that the IOC is the owner of all rights in and to the Olympic Games and the Olympic Properties and, in particular, regarding the audio-visual content produced for the Olympic Summer Games Paris 2024,” the organization writes.

“Such Olympic content may not be transmitted or communicated via the internet or any other interactive media or electronic medium without the express prior written approval of the IOC, which in accordance with our records, has not been granted to you.”

Despite the IOC’s efforts, the cat-and-mouse game between rights holders and pirates continues. As soon as one streaming site is taken down, another pops up in its place. VPNs and other technological workarounds allow determined viewers to bypass geographical restrictions and access pirated streams.

However, the IOC and its partners are not giving up. They’re exploring new technologies to combat piracy, including watermarking content to trace the source of leaks and using artificial intelligence to detect and shut down illegal streams more quickly.