Whenever I get a little down over how much power unelected corporations have in my country, I can at least cheer myself up a little by being thankful that something as stupid as football doesn't have enough power here to control whether or not I have internet access.

La Liga is basically operating like an "unelected corporation" as well.

The problem is probably just distributed responsibility. If I lived in Spain I'd set their website as my proxy for everything that doesn't work before I filed my complaints so they could directly address each problem..

Ignorance is a bliss, agree :) Sometimes we all need to force ourselves into that so we can get a bit more joy.

It would if it were bigger business in your country. Try torrenting an MCU movie and see what happens to your ISP account.

Someone in Texas torrenting an MCU slop doesn’t disconnect me from half the Internet.

In my experience, nothing...

Out of curiosity, what does happen?

Your ISP sends you a "strike" letter, and eventually cancels your service if you continue to receive them.

AFAIK not much in most of the world, in Germany you get a letter from lawyers wanting ~1000 EUR

In Australia the court ruled that they can only sue for the cost of renting the movie, so they don't bother trying to recoup their ten bucks

That's interesting. Do you have further reading? I've seen AFACT v iiNet, but that doesn't look to be the source of "cost of renting", just that the ISP isn't responsible for their users.

Yep, check out Dallas Buyers Club v iiNet

Here's some commentary on it:

> Justice Perram discussed the idea of speculative invoicing within Australia

> Representing to a consumer that they have a liability which they do not may well be misleading and deceptive conduct within the meaning of s 18 of the Australian Consumer Law and it may be equally misleading to represent to someone that their potential liability is much higher than it could ever realistically be. There may also be something to be said for the idea that speculative invoicing might be a species of unconscionable conduct within one or other of s 21 of the Australian Consumer Law or s 12CB of the Australian Securities and Investments Commission Act 2001 (Cth).

> Further, even if speculative invoicing was deemed to be lawful within Australia, the damages that the individual may be liable to are often calculated differently to that of the United States. In Australia, damages are compensatory in nature, meaning to compensate the plaintiff for the loss suffered. One Intellectual Property Lawyer has been quoted as saying, ‘If a film costs $20, the damages would ordinarily be expected to be $20.’

https://www.kells.com.au/insights/business/dallas-buyers-clu...

Canada is capped at $5k for noncommercial infringement, and even at that amount it still isn't worth it for the copyright holder to go to court.