The Premier League has been accused of acting like a “blundering football striker” after a legal row with a Swedish firm has resulted in hundreds of websites – including the Radio Times – being blocked.
The Premier League won a High Court injunction to make ISPs block the IP address used by Sweden-based First Row Sports, which offers web users unauthorised live football games.
But other websites use the same IP address, resulting in them being cut off too. The BBC says the problem occurs when users type in “radiotimes.com”, rather than the full “www.radiotimes.com” address, or when they drop the “www” from any other affected sites.
Radio Times editor Ben Preston told the BBC: “It’s outrageous that our website has been suddenly switched off and our users wrongly informed that it’s to protect against copyright infringement.
“The Premier League seems to be behaving like the worst sort of blundering striker who’s forgotten the first rule of football – check you’re at the right end before you shoot.”
Other sites affected include football clubs Blackburn Rovers, Reading and Brentford, along with Notes from Nature and Galaxy Zoo.
The ISPs, including BT and Virgin, now say they are lifting the block, but the Premier League has warned ISPs they cannot act unilaterally without breaking the court order.
A Premier League spokesman said: “The court order that requires ISPs to block this website clearly states that any issues they have in implementing the block must be raised with the Premier League before taking any further action.
“The fact remains that the High Court has ordered an injunction requiring ISPs to block First Row Sports and we will continue to implement it and expect the ISPs to respect the ruling.”
