With the boom in streaming websites, Kenyans have turned to streaming movies, TV shows and even live football matches through various third-party services, mostly illegal sources. And it’s not just Kenya, it’s a worldwide problem.

It’s a problem because it is considered copyright infringement, in that, the services that stream these shows are not licensed to do so making the whole industry essentially a black-market industry.

Now, Multichoice, the company that owns satellite TV service, DStv has gone to court seeking to compel ISPs, Safaricom and Jamii Telecommunications Limited (JTL) to block the websites that stream these illegal content, in specific, live sports.

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It is known that one of the major reasons people still pay for DStv is access to live sports, particularly football. Multichoice now wants ISPs to block access to sites that allow people to illegally stream live events that are aired on SuperSports.

According to Multichoice’s court records, Safaricom and JTL have previously ignored the Pay-TV service’s request to take down these sites. Multichoice says that on October 29, it issued takedown notices to both Safaricom and JTL, both of whom ignored the notice.

“Section 35B of the Copyright Act obligates an Internet service provider to take down any infringing content within 48 hours of being served with a takedown notice,” says MultiChoice in court papers.

“The rebroadcasting, retransmitting or replicating the exclusive content of the applicant without their authorisation is a breach of their rights, is unlawful and causes irreparable economic loss to the applicant, not to mention other losses and evils that piracy perpetrates,” reads the papers.

This is the first case of it’s kind and we’re yet to see how it pans out. Do you think these streaming websites should be blocked?