Clampdown on TV 'Dodgy Boxes'

How will Sky be able to prove in a court that they suffered a loss. IPTV services cover 1000s of channels around the world - someone could be watching TV channels from Australia with content not even available on Sky. They had no intent on streaming Sky content.

In a criminal court this will be difficult and I can't see it happening.

In a civil Court, they won't need to as they just want to get some low hanging fruit for headlines. I.e., people who bought a dodgy box subscription of a known dodgy box dealer, and it is proven by Revolut that they paid for it.

Another thing to bear in mind is if people have a legal sky subscription such as now TV plus a "dodgy box".

bogeyman

How they prosecute people like me for instance is going to be fun to watch going forward.

“Erm, you’ve the capabilities of viewing Sky Sports on your illegal app & you pay for it monthly via Now TV - there’s an x fine”

People must be living in cloud 9 if they think people at home are going to get done lol

But they are not going to attempt to prosecute you.

They are going to attempt to prosecute people they know bought an illegal streaming service from a known illegal streaming service seller.

And they are going to go after the people that they know don't or didn't have a Sports or Now subscription.

The whole idea being to make people think twice about buying an illegal streaming service because they could go after you if your illegal streaming service seller is shut down.

And I don't see why they would go after you anyway, you don't have an illegal streaming service.

You claim that all you have are legit subscriptions and a VPN.

But a lot of users don't know how to cut out the middle man.

Buying a stick, installing an app (especially if it's one not in the app store) and configuring that app with a URL and credentials that you got from an online seller is way beyond the tech ability of an awful lot of households.

God help them if they have to add a VPN or whatever it's called.

The next iteration of dodgy box man might be one that comes to your house to do the above and you pay him cash.

An app does not have to be 'dodgy' to connect to an unlawful stream. It depends on what it is used for.
So 'dodgy app' is not quite appropriate either.

Why not call it what it is, instead of trying to attach the action to an app or a device? (not as 'catchy' I guess is the answer)

It concerns intellectual property rights, and for the user of such streams it is a civil matter for the courts, where the IP owner/licencee takes the receiver of the unlawful stream to court.

To do so is too costly for little or no reward, so it does not happen.

The model for piracy has changed since a lot of the legislation was drafted. The method of accessing these streams is almost device-independent. Previously, there would have been a piece of hardware that could be identified as a "protection-defeating device". Ordinary software with legitimate use that could be used with a login to access some of these services would add to the confusion. The media likes simple and catchy phrases for pirate devices. For example, the first pirate smartcard for Sky was called the "Ho Lee Fook" hack. Some of this is down to marketing. A lot of it is down to packaging a complex technology in an easy to remember phrase. The dodgybox is one of these.People are aware of it and it would be difficult for the media to change now.

You could make a strong argument that by acquiring your services, even if legit in a different country, you are still engaging in piracy of a sort. You are accessing media without purchasing from the rights holders in this country. Whether that falls under the same sort of law that accessing from unlicensed/stolen apps like the normal dodgy services or not, I don't know. But either way, Sky are still losing out if you're watching Premier league as an example...

They only have to aggressively go after the seller/reseller network which would cover a fair amount of DB's, to make it undesirable for sellers, I'd say a significant portion of end users wouldn't be savy enough to set it up themselves without seller guidance/devices. Additionally ISP know the IPs of most users/services as they aren't using VPNs, services regularly get blocked during certain times-this could be done on a permenant basis. If sky etc go after end users(traced via banks and IPs) do you think much of the professional classes/garda/their spouses want to take the chance to see themselves in the news? It'll be interesting to see how things play out …..

It was known as Grey Market Piracy in the business. With satellite TV, ex-pats and holiday home owners used to use an address in another country to subscribe to a service in that country. It is the kind of thing that used to happen when there was no working hack/pirate smartcards or decoders on a service. The rights holders in various countries made money from it and there wasn't too much grumbling as most broadcasters had Grey Market subscribers. The geographical nature of satellite TV coverage limited it on a regional basis so a European subscriber could not subscribe to a US service (the transmissions could not be received). The Internet and broadband changed things. I don't think that the broadcasters published any figures for it as they were too busy making money from the subscriptions.

One of two things will happen. Either the Law will change to make it easier to catch/prosecute people OR the rights holders will find an techical solution. Too much money at stake.