MICHEL MARTIN, HOST:
Steve, OK, let me ask. Did you stay up late - I mean really late - to watch the World Series last night?
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
(Laughter) No, it was exactly the time period that I'm asleep.
MARTIN: Well, you know, if you had stayed up, it aired for free on local Fox stations. But most of the regular season games you're going to want to see require a subscription, so some fans are turning to pirated websites. NPR's Ben Abrams reports on efforts to block those sites.
BEN ABRAMS, BYLINE: Cable and streaming subscriptions are sacking Dai Nixon's wallet. He's a podcaster and a Philadelphia Eagles fan.
DAI NIXON: We have to purchase these different subscriptions just to keep up with our favorite sports teams, which is, you know, kind of ridiculous.
ABRAMS: Nixon watches games on YouTube TV, which costs him about $83 a month. But he lives in Charlotte, North Carolina. So some weekends, he can't watch his favorite team on an NFL-sanctioned platform. That's when he turns to NFLBITE, one of the popular foreign-based websites that illegally streams the games. The site is also free.
NIXON: You know, I love my team. But, I mean, I'm not going to, you know, kick out over 300, 350 bucks annually just to watch them every week when I can do the same thing for not that price.
ABRAMS: In 2023, about 1 out of 3 NFL fans said they watched some games on illegal streaming platforms. That's according to betting site Oddspedia. And there's little to stop them.
MIKE SMITH: The challenge is, under existing U.S. law, there's just not much they can do to shut down these sites.
ABRAMS: That's Mike Smith, professor of information technology and policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Earlier this year, authorities shut down StreamEast, a popular network that offers unauthorized sports content.
SMITH: It required a yearlong investigation between U.S. rights holders and Egyptian law enforcement to finally get these sites shut down. When you shut down those sites, a bunch of new copycat sites appear quite quickly.
ABRAMS: Now Congress wants to make it harder for pirate websites to stream stolen content. Democratic Senator Adam Schiff of California is sponsoring the Block Bad Electronic Art and Recording Distributors Act, known as the Block BEARD Act for short.
ADAM SCHIFF: This is an effort to allow copyright holders to go to court and say, hey, this is my property. And this foreign site is predominantly in the business of theft.
ABRAMS: The bipartisan bill would allow copyright holders, such as the NFL, to request federal courts to direct service providers to block sites that have stolen their content. Democratic Senator Chris Coons of Delaware is cosponsoring the bill. He says it's about keeping Americans' information safe.
CHRIS COONS: Maybe you do get a chance to watch the Eagles for free or to see the latest movie you want to watch. But what you're also doing is opening the front door to all of your data, your finances, your web-browsing history.
ABRAMS: Mike Smith of Carnegie Mellon says his research shows that laws similar to the Block BEARD Act passed in other countries discourage internet piracy.
SMITH: Just blocking access to the site from within the country increases people's likelihood to pay for legal content.
ABRAMS: NPR reached out to a handful of sites that pirate NFL games to ask for comment about how the act would affect their operations. None of them responded. Eagles fan Dai Nixon doesn't share the same worries about pirated streams hurting copyright holders. He's also not concerned about his personal data being stolen. But if his favorite pirating site did get shut down?
NIXON: Every system can be finessed, just ask the president. So it may be a bump in the road, but the road is still there.
ABRAMS: So for now, Nixon can keep streaming pirated games. And the Senate authors of the Block BEARD Act hope to release a bicameral bill with the House by the end of this year.
Ben Abrams, NPR News.
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