Clampdown on TV 'Dodgy Boxes'

You keep going on and on about how the end is nigh and end users should quit while they're ahead.

But that's not reality. Not when Gardai themselves are involved. Not in a country where "shenanigans" and the "be grand" approach are standard, and there's still so much admiration for the "cute hoor" getting one over on "the man".

Sky have a lull now before the new football season starts so they're trying to scare people into subscriptions beforehand but as I said previously, they're not actually losing anything. People aren't just going to start paying them instead. They'll just do without if it came to it.

Its crazy money. But its not just the cost of Sky is the issue, their model is so completely broken. Why would anyone pay so much money for so little? Outside of the sports channels, I can't think of any other channel I'd even be remotely interested in.

But when they get an easy target, the public will pile in big time on their victim, and the politicians will follow suit. Who defended the Garda managers who wiped out the Penalty Points? Nobody. But the main mover in that saga Mick Wallace said he was fine with rank and file Gardai not enforcing Points on the road, they could use their own judgement. And everybody was OK with that.

Sky are able to command the front page of the Independent two days in a row with stories which are bound to have put doubt in the minds of some middle class generally law abiding citizens. If they could get hold of information about a high ranking Garda who has a dodgy box, that would be gold for a newpaper front page. The Commissioner and the Mininster would be brought into the story, and it might even emerge that some TD or Senator is a dodgy box owner.

Sky will have no customers left if things progress the way they are going. They need to defend themselves against the criminal gangs stealing their very expensively produced content. I think the most interesting thing to emerge from the recent stories, is the Data Protection issue. There is going to be a legal battle between Sky and the Human Rights defenders, on how far they can go in pursuing information about the fraudsters.

You are probably right about the Gardai not going to make any effort to enforce the law, because so many of them are lawbreakers themselves. But I don't agree with your analysis about people doing without the Premier League for example, if the pirates are closed down.

Sky create that game and whinge about losing. Sky have the opportunity to play the game differently but don't.

Most users of IPTV can't afford Sky. They are not suddenly going to be able to pay for Sky if the IPTV feeds disappear.

And IPTV is here to stay. You won't find the supier, thru are well hidden through VPN.

Yeah, I know this isnt related, I just tune in when the match is just kicking off, youtube at ht and turn off at end of match. I have eyes, i can make up my own mind about the match.

Im also a utd supporter so its generally a disaster anyway, dont need Keane and Scholes telling me how shite it is.

It is crazy money, then you have ads on top of that. Stremio for tv and movies, iptv for sport.

They have shown that they can't stop it really. Its like trying to hold back the wind.

When there is a real big match, or a big fight on, they have managed to target certain servers and taken them down just before it starts. This means that some users ( and by some i mean a tiny minority) will be affected for a short while, until the servers can be sorted or switched over. I have heard of a few cases of this happening, and the most that was missed was 3/4 of a first half of a football match.

The fact that it caused inconvenience and users to miss part of the game MIGHT be enough to make certain users think "bugger that, this iptv is ****, I'm going back to Sky" , but id say overall that will be a small number.

I would think the last tv rights where Sky paid £6.7billion pounds is the last we will see of the huge money.

Either somebody else will come in, or Premier League will set up their own streaming platform.

I know somebody working in this business - they told me the two biggest countries for streaming in Europe (per head of population) were the Irish and Italians. Serie A has been hit hard by iptv, value of the rights is in trouble. The UK is actually not that bad for it, but increasing rapidly.

I've never understood when anyone would really be against "dodgy boxes". Why does it matter to you if Sky make €200m profit or €100m profit?

As plenty have pointed out if IPTV went down tomorrow, most wouldn't be signing up to Sky so their target market aren't really the majority of "dodgy box" holders.

All I'd want Sky for is sports and not even all of them mainly football, some golf and F1, nothing else, so why should I have to pay for Sky Atlantic, Sky Arts, RTÉ, Dave, UKTV Gold and all that other shíte?

i dont watch football as an example, the money they are on is off the charts, its sickening really. thats another debate, but its madness.

we dont even watch anything of the irish sh1te on tv, nothing. And we dont watch tv not too much , but still pay a tv license ? for the rubbish they broadcast. rte and the thrash station that is tv-flee are pure muck. its like looking at someone who has gorged themselves on food, covered themselves with it, regurgitate the food, eat it again - sickening. Yeah, not for us.

we do have a couple of streams we pay for like netflix, but managed to get a deal. so dont mind that so much.

CH4 are great, news is informative and real, and you can get loads on their player from here.

Simple solution to that, turn off your text notifications whilst watching the game.

It would be interesting to know what additional revenue sports broadcasting gets by additional viewers through iptv being shown their ads during pre-show and half time, and on pitch/track/ringside advertising boards.

It hasn't burst yet because live sport is the last thing driving subscriptions. Everything else is watched on demand.

The law being broken is copyright infringement I'm pretty sure and just like I can't say "I didn't know I couldn't murder somebody" after I've done it, ignorance of the law is no defence!

There is no way the EPL will set up their own streaming service. Within about 5 minutes it would be on every such TV service! They will definitely adopt a "bird in the hand" approach albeit the direction of travel is a significantly reduced tender for the next football package from Sky, etc.

It'll be up to the clubs how to manage a vastly reduced income stream from TV rights but I'd say the parts of the world where a VPN or illegal streaming could land you in jail (e.g. China) must account for a huge chunk of the TV rights deal as well. Maybe they can afford to take a hit on the UK/Irish market.