Live Stream Rugby was the top search item on Google for "free rugby stream" and is still up today broadcasting The UK ITV channel.
Live Stream Rugby was the top search item on Google for "free rugby stream" and is still up today broadcasting The UK ITV channel.
Amid the frustration of thousands of Kiwis complaining about Spark's occasionally glitchy streaming of the Rugby World Cup, a litany of easy to find "free" online streams remain available.
And they're not as illegal as you might expect, according to one IT expert.
A Google search of "free rugby stream" during last weekend's quarter-final matches turned up half a dozen pages containing the British ITV broadcast of the Rugby World Cup.
Top Google search pages "Live Stream Rugby" and "Rugby Online Stream" broadcast all of the quarter-finals at no charge, and remain online as of this weekend.
And yesterday, both pages contained advertisements for both semifinals: last night's All Blacks-England clash and tonight's Springboks-Wales match.
Spark corporate relations partner Anaru Tuhi told the Herald on Sunday industry-leading security measures were in place to protect their Rugby World Cup content, but he would not elaborate further.
"We don't provide detail on security measures in general. However I can reassure you the measures we have in place to protect the content on the Spark Sport platform are very robust," Tuhi said.
AUT University head of computer science Associate Professor Dave Parry said while Spark may attempt to block a local New Zealand server that was broadcasting their Spark service directly, they had little authority to stop overseas streams of international broadcasts.
"I think if you charged people for a stream, Spark would be able to get you for it. But I think they would be very hard pressed to say streaming something from another country is illegal in this country if the material's not offensive," he said.
Parry said the typical way to broadcast a free stream of exclusive content was to set up a Virtual Private Network (VPN) online where both the location of the server that is streaming the "free" Rugby World Cup content, and the server location of the people who have created the web page, is untraceable.
"Generally the network people like Spark don't have the access to block that," Parry said.
"So locally they can do things but really, if you're prepared to take a bit of time to look up a VPN and go overseas, it's very hard to block those."
Numerous free rugby streams of the British ITV broadcast of the Rugby World Cup couple be found on the first Google search page.
Parry also said the chance of Spark prosecuting a New Zealand citizen who was found broadcasting a free stream was also extremely low.
"I personally think they wouldn't because the blowback from it would be pretty large. Usually these people who set up a website that offers streaming, deliberately don't control or know what's going through [the stream on their page].
An explainer on the Live Stream Rugby page.
"They'll just say 'Somebody's providing us $5 a month to stream through our service and it could be completely legitimate, and you've just blocked it'."
Accounts emerged of private investigators reportedly waiting all day outside people's houses, and emailing suspected streamers with requests to repair their computers.
Sky TV also cut subscriptions to people live-streaming pay-per-view Parker bouts.
