A Florida federal judge has handed a broadcaster the same site blocking power Congress has spent two years arguing over, and no new law was needed to get it.
Mexican broadcaster TelevisaUnivision sued five pirate IPTV services in June. Judge Kathleen Williams signed a restraining order a day later, and nobody showed up to object.
Americans have watched the MPA push for blocking legislation and two bills stall in Congress. This case skipped that fight.
How a US Court Order Blocks Sites Without a Blocking Law
TelevisaUnivision’s lawyers can add services, domains, and apps by filing a sworn declaration. No hearing required. It takes effect the moment it hits the docket.
Two such filings already swept in RojaDirecta, Pirlo TV, Strikeout, and XuperTV, none of them ever defendants. It runs about two years and covers shows the broadcaster does not own yet.
We cover a lot of blocking orders here, and this one bothers me. A courtroom where only one party ever appears is not much of a courtroom.
Cloudflare Ordered to Unmask Account Holders
The company had 24 hours to cut off CDN, proxy, and DNS service, then surrender origin server IPs, account holder names, payment details, and two weeks of request logs.
Then comes the line worth reading twice. Every other account sharing a billing name or email address gets identified too.
Hide Your Digital Fingerprint
That reaches people nobody accused of anything, echoing when LaLiga chased a customer in Spain.
What This Means for Cord Cutters
Registrars pulled domains here, so this was not ISP level blocking. Of 474 checked, 203 went dark and 270 stayed up. A VPN does nothing for you there. Suspended domains stay gone whichever server you route through, and I would rather say so than sell a fix that fails.
Privacy tools still matter for the data trail. Names, payments, and logs move fast once a rights holder asks, and ISPs already track subscribers under similar orders. Our VPN rankings weigh no logging policies heaviest.
Final Thoughts from Troy
One judge, one day, zero opposition, and the United States has blocking without a vote. Lawmakers still debate a power a Florida courtroom already granted, while 270 domains resolve fine today.
Rights holders keep winning paperwork as the real effect of site blocking stays thin. Until legitimate services are priced fairly, we can expect the endless game of ‘streaming whac-a-mole’ to continue.
For more details on this story, refer to official court documentation (PDF) and the report from TorrentFreak.
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