Clampdown on TV 'Dodgy Boxes'

I edited my post after writing it mentioning that I never claimed they would go after end users. I actually agree it seems unlikely they would start fining people for it unless they become really desperate. Likely it'd be too much work for them and too much potential for embarrassment and bad publicity, especially if they were to start doing it retroactively now. Still going forward you never know, if you start now with an Irish provider and buy a lot, there's a chance you could find yourself fined as an example and they will say you got all the warnings and didn't listen.

Get a VPN you'll be fine and you should be using one anyway. If these sort of penalties on users does come to pass, it'll be the non VPN users, the low hanging fruit. They'll will hit a few and try scare the rest.

They just aren't going to the trouble of getting a VPN provider to comply to a court order and hand over user data.

Exactly this. The music labels never defeated file sharing or torrenting. They were forced to adapt to evolving customer habits with the popularity of mp3 players and embrace the iTunes model and then streaming. This was after they went after members of the public through the courts for heavy fines and then faced a backlash as this was seen as disproportionate.

I remember at the time there wasn't much sympathy for the music industry. The labels had an oligopoly for decades with 1500% profit margins on physical media, huge royalty cuts, brutal artist contracts etc.

Nord VPN have an option with revolut, so it could easily become free.

I really don't understand understand why people use illegal dodgy boxes when you can legitimately get all the channels for 60 euro per year using a firestick. My provider is a lovely guy too, helps out on WhatsApp when issues with the service arise on the rare occasion.

😂

There is indeed. Every second person I know has one with various different sources.

The threats from sky or whomever to get names addresses and payment info from the guys who sell the services are just that. Empty threats. Even if they could hire enough people to process and arrange charging of the individuals involved I'd expect it would be a relatively difficult thing to actually prove. They may not be enough evidence in that alone for example.

Express VPN, I was disappointed when I read this article,

https://www.presstv.ir/Detail/2024/09/29/734182/VPNs-have-been-taken-over-by-former-Israeli-spies

My contract runs up around next September but I will be looking for alternatives.

The only way to combat piracy is to go back to physical media and even though it can be copied, the spread of copyrighted material would be massively reduced.

SKY had a good system of copyright protection of the digitally recorded material on their decoders but their IP streams are incredibly easy to find online and add to any firestick or android box.

Sky have not renewed their contract with SES who own Astra 28.2 which is due for decommission in 2029 and will be a catastrophic loss for SES on 28.2, it's said that if enough TV networks request extension then they might be able to keep it going another year or 2 but Astra 28.2 is fast reaching end of life so it's unlikely it's use will be extended and SES have no plans to launch another satellite to replace 28.2 so all sky subscribers will have to go IP only.

Some TV channels have gone off 28.2 already and switched to IP only.

I do wonder is it all good to have everything dependent on the internet ?

Napster was one of the first illegal downloading platforms that was simple for ordinary people to use, but prior to that there was what was called "Warez" mostly found on IRC platforms, wow, that's taking me back a long time. But IRC was riddled with virus's and trojans too.

I remember you went into a chat room and, if I remember correctly, in the chat people would announce what software or music they had, forget videos at the time, the bandwidth wasn't there on dial up modems, you would look through the list that you received and then you typed out some command to receive that music or software. I forget exactly.

Then more and more HTTP sites appeared making it even easier to download music and software making IRC less useful.

After that and before torrent there was the usenet servers which had anything and everything you could want in music and movies at fast speeds but they were raided by the Germans some years back and I have no idea what usenet is like today.

Torrent use is exploding the last year or two because the content providers got greedy and wanted their own streaming platforms, people were happy to pay Netflix xx per month for everything but that has changed now and there are a lot of streaming services meaning people have to spend a lot of money to get everything.

I had Amazon prime and now that has changed , they will give you so many TV series episodes for example and then make you pay for the rest so I cancelled my subscription.

As long as the internet exists and as long as it's gets more complicated and expensive for people to access content they will get it through unofficial sources and the movie and music industry, the TV networks can't change that, the internet let the genie out of the bottle and it can't be put back without dramatic change.