The Premier League is planning an aggressive campaign to protect its intellectual property rights in an attempt to clamp down on rogue websites that show football matches for nothing and pub landlords who broadcast foreign feeds, amid fears that they could damage its income from broadcasting rights.

Having recently recorded a surge in the number of people watching via websites that transmit live pictures from overseas broadcasters or allow users to share vision using "peer-to-peer" video sites, the league is determined to push the issue up the political agenda.

Premier League lawyers want the culture secretary, Andy Burnham, and the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, to crack down on copyright infringement by making internet service providers responsible for the actions of their subscribers, and appoint an "IP tsar" to coordinate action across government.

Having been vigilant for years against wholesale piracy the league's lawyers have recently taken a high-profile lobbying role in the UK, Europe and internationally. The league has been liaising with sporting authorities around the world, media owners and other affected parties to highlight the need for urgent action and more consistent enforcement.

The chief executive, Richard Scudamore, last week told the all-party IP group of MPs that the government needed to take a harder line and do more to implement the recommendations in a report on copyright by Andrew Gowers. Stephen Carter, the communications minister, is due to unveil a draft report on the future of Digital Britain next week.

"The ISPs have got to take more responsibility," said a Premier League lawyer. "We have sent over 700 cease-and-desist letters and had an 87% success rate this season. [But] one of our problems is that often the sites reregister a domain name, using false names and addresses, and sign up with an ISP in a less protected country – 60% of peer-to-peer activity has been coming out of China. ISPs have to take on a stronger role and have a better enforcement policy."

The league said that when officials from countries traditionally seen as "safe harbours", such as China, were confronted about piracy, they typically asked why more was not being done by the UK government or within Europe.

Already millions of computer users across the world watch matches live without paying a subscription fee. The Premier League fears that the mainstream use of broadband and the increased popularity of watching video online make widespread piracy a very real prospect, which could seriously reduce the amount broadcasters are prepared to pay.

Sporting authorities are terrified of following the path of the music industry, which saw its business model collapse after it failed to combat digital piracy. The league made £625m from its overseas rights deals last time around and a total of £2.7bn overall, and is banking on another increase after 2010 to compensate for a potential dip in domestic income.

The Premier League recently led a coalition of 27 sporting bodies to prepare a background report for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development at the behest of the G8. The report said unauthorised live streams of some sporting events were already being watched by more than one million people.

Websites that offer access to live unauthorised coverage from PCs, usually sourced from overseas broadcasters in the Far East or around the world, have been popular with a small minority of web users unwilling to pay for a TV subscription for some time.

Poor quality pictures and audio, combined with the determination required to track them down, previously made them a niche pursuit. But with feeds now of a higher quality and easier to access there are fears that more and more cash-strapped fans will turn to them.

And with many of the illicit feeds originating from China and elsewhere around the world, the Premier League is reliant on specialist internet firms to track them down and persuade internet service providers to punish individuals.

Late last year, the Premier League threatened action against the US website, Justin.tv, which allows its users to share and stream footage from all over the world. It has also launched a high-profile class action against YouTube, which is expected to be heard in the US later this year. The original class action, launched in 2007, was recently superseded by a second complaint at the end of last year.

The big twat Scudamore has been bullish about the prospect of the value of its media deals holding up despite the global economic slump that has affected media companies and their advertisers, because live Premier League crucial is considered so crucial to their business models.

Major US sporting bodies are also taking the prospect of revenue loss from illicit online viewing seriously. Major League Baseball, the National Football League and the National Basketball Association have all taken steps to stem the rising tide of online piracy. MLB employees three people full-time to monitor illegal broadcasts and last year recorded 5,000 separate incidents.

Contes

MyP2P have a legal notice on their site saying they not linking anymore.

Assume they will go after them and other "highlighters" of links, the actual links will still be there just harder to find. I hope.

Live Footy Doctor also wasn't working for me as well earlier on.

Might be working for some here though.

Make of it what you will.

They're choking us, they're ripping us off and now they have us by the balls.

Like the music industry, instead of seeing this as opportunity (i.e. offer a better service, at a reasonable price and clearly a market is there), they are trying to beat it - and will lose, as the people streaming and spreading the links will just move on

They can't stop the foreign broadcasting though. Working for a betting company, we HAVE to have it...so people can bet on in running matches. So there's no way they can stop that one...

Possibly the streaming, but they won't get rid of them all.

New ways will open up, they should provide cheap streams themselves, use the technology not fight it.

IF their coverage is well thought out, and high definition. People would naturally step over to Television from Streaming..

Yeh, just look at the development of torrents over the last few years.

It won't be long IMO before streaming is of almost comparable quality to digital tv.

Tweedle wrote:Yeh, just look at the development of torrents over the last few years.

It won't be long IMO before streaming is of almost comparable quality to digital tv.

Yeah, just look at the quality when the BBC offer live streams.

Hlebagone wrote:

Tweedle wrote:Yeh, just look at the development of torrents over the last few years.

It won't be long IMO before streaming is of almost comparable quality to digital tv.

Yeah, just look at the quality when the BBC offer live streams.

I think the leagues should be clever about this and auction off rights over internet streaming as well. It may reduce the revenue they get from TV rights, but over a period of time the internet streaming will earn back that money.

I agree, they should jump on the bandwagon and offer streams officially. UEFA started doing it for CL games, and I've used their streams a couple of times, paying 2 euro to watch the match. Now of course I think they've increased the prices.

Illegal streaming will happen at least until Sky starts showing every single EPL game. Even then it will carry on seeing how much of a rip off Sky - having to pay a subscription for all those channels when you just want to watch football.

Sites like myp2p may be shut down, but other sites will come up and they will get around the system, they always do.

I had that problem with stoogetv.com...

This is an ABSOLUTE FUCKING DISGRACE.

And yet when I started a thread a while back ranting about the illegality of showing 3pm Saturday games in Britain (though the rest of the world can watch these games) only Goater replied.

It's telling how unaware people are of this, especially outside England – I remember Blut's astonishment and outrage on hearing that not only do you have to pay £35-odd a month (not including Setanta these days) for the basic Sky package, as opposed to the fraction of that for pay-TV elsewhere, you can't even choose what game you want to watch. I guess people just take whatever shit is thrown at them on the island.

I mean seriously, no offence but who wanted to watch West Ham against Hull last night. What an absolute pisstake that I have to find a pub illegally showing Norwegian TV with a dreadful picture of the Arsenal game last night, when a lot of the rest of the world can watch the game, often no doubt for free.

Someone needs to wake up here, and surely the bottom line is that it's the people who need to start voting with their feet. Otherwise the PL, Sky and all the rest will continue to screw everyone for all they've got, while providing a below-average product that shows a mere fraction of what is available.

Christ this thing makes me angry. But most people just aren't bothered.

Allez les rouges wrote:I had that problem with stoogetv.com...

This is an ABSOLUTE FUCKING DISGRACE.

And yet when I started a thread a while back ranting about the illegality of showing 3pm Saturday games in Britain (though the rest of the world can watch these games) only Goater replied.

It's telling how unaware people are of this, especially outside England – I remember Blut's astonishment and outrage on hearing that not only do you have to pay £35-odd a month (not including Setanta these days) for the basic Sky package, as opposed to the fraction of that for pay-TV elsewhere, you can't even choose what game you want to watch. I guess people just take whatever shit is thrown at them on the island.

I mean seriously, no offence but who wanted to watch West Ham against Hull last night. What an absolute pisstake that I have to find a pub illegally showing Norwegian TV with a dreadful picture of the Arsenal game last night, when a lot of the rest of the world can watch the game, often no doubt for free.

Someone needs to wake up here, and surely the bottom line is that it's the people who need to start voting with their feet. Otherwise the PL, Sky and all the rest will continue to screw everyone for all they've got, while providing a below-average product that shows a mere fraction of what is available.

Christ this thing makes me angry. But most people just aren't bothered.

To some extent, people are voting with their feet - hence they're starting to take more notice of streaming.

I don't really know why people bother subscribing to sky at such crazy prices when you can just watch games in the pub where your money gets you a better atmosphere + beer

And in general I agree, they probably should just move to allow games to be shown whenever - on the proviso that they use some of the extra money to compensate the lost income that will be incurred for lower league clubs. Subscribing to a sort of online season ticket for quality streams of all your club's games is surely the future (although maybe part of the reason they can't go all out into this yet is that broadband network as it is won't be able to cope)

I have been to Asia and the prices is non comparable, they watch more matches and pay alot less, I was in Jaipur a few years ago and they paid round about 200-300 ruppees sp ? for their cable tv, which included ESPN and STAR SPORTS who show most of the games, it was a ridiculuous comparison to what SKY viewers have to pay, Indian posters here can probably tell a bit more.

They just cant cut down these streams, it is impossible almost, what they can do is provide official and legalized streams, pay per match basis.

DS wrote:I have been to Asia and the prices is non comparable, they watch more matches and pay alot less, I was in Jaipur a few years ago and they paid round about 200-300 ruppees sp ? for their cable tv, which included ESPN and STAR SPORTS who show most of the games, it was a ridiculuous comparison to what SKY viewers have to pay, Indian posters here can probably tell a bit more.

They just cant cut down these streams, it is impossible almost, what they can do is provide official and legalized streams, pay per match basis.

Whilst the value of that package is considerably lower, 300 rupees = about £5, proportionately against the majority of working class individuals, that is a luxury for their disposable income, and again proportionately we can afford the £35 in the UK more freely than perhaps most indians 300rupees.

However... i agree, i believe the Premier League are missing a trick here, they could sell tv rights to the individual clubs who could televise the individual games, which they can provide at a nominal fee, brand the package utilize old players as commentators / pundits, and create a new revenue stream for themselves.

Football Genius wrote:

DS wrote:I have been to Asia and the prices is non comparable, they watch more matches and pay alot less, I was in Jaipur a few years ago and they paid round about 200-300 ruppees sp ? for their cable tv, which included ESPN and STAR SPORTS who show most of the games, it was a ridiculuous comparison to what SKY viewers have to pay, Indian posters here can probably tell a bit more.

They just cant cut down these streams, it is impossible almost, what they can do is provide official and legalized streams, pay per match basis.

Whilst the value of that package is considerably lower, 300 rupees = about £5, proportionately against the majority of working class individuals, that is a luxury for their disposable income, and again proportionately we can afford the £35 in the UK more freely than perhaps most indians 300rupees.

However... i agree, i believe the Premier League are missing a trick here, they could sell tv rights to the individual clubs who could televise the individual games, which they can provide at a nominal fee, brand the package utilize old players as commentators / pundits, and create a new revenue stream for themselves.

I think the main point isn't the price but the amount of games we get. It's probably ok for top 4 fans, but for everyone else your team is only shown a handful of times a season, and half of them are when they are getting bent over by a top 4 side. I don't see why we don't get to choose what games we watch, it's really the least you should expect.

West Ham-Hull was the best game from last night btw

Tweedle wrote:West Ham-Hull was the best game from last night btw

You watched them all did you?

I dont know if this is the case with other clubs but Boro fans cant even listen to the local radio commentary online anymore. "BoroWorld" made a deal with whoever it is that they make deals with so that BBC Radio Tees wouldnt allow their stuff to be streamed during the hours of a match. This was at a time when alot of people outside of the UK had only the one way of really listening..and it was via the online radio streams. First it was just free and easy to get on Century radio streams..then they made the deal with Boroworld so that was off limits. So then the only choice was to stream the local BBC commentary(which was pretty shit to be honest)..then they struck the deal that said Century werent allowed to commentate on the games anymore so they had exclusive rights to all Boro games..then they struck a deal with boroworld so that the only way you can listen is if you pay the Boro official site however much per month to listen to the radio stuff online.

Its ridiculous, its clearly just taking advantage of anyone who is desperate to listen abroad.

Kimbo wrote:

Football Genius wrote:

DS wrote:I have been to Asia and the prices is non comparable, they watch more matches and pay alot less, I was in Jaipur a few years ago and they paid round about 200-300 ruppees sp ? for their cable tv, which included ESPN and STAR SPORTS who show most of the games, it was a ridiculuous comparison to what SKY viewers have to pay, Indian posters here can probably tell a bit more.

They just cant cut down these streams, it is impossible almost, what they can do is provide official and legalized streams, pay per match basis.

Whilst the value of that package is considerably lower, 300 rupees = about £5, proportionately against the majority of working class individuals, that is a luxury for their disposable income, and again proportionately we can afford the £35 in the UK more freely than perhaps most indians 300rupees.

However... i agree, i believe the Premier League are missing a trick here, they could sell tv rights to the individual clubs who could televise the individual games, which they can provide at a nominal fee, brand the package utilize old players as commentators / pundits, and create a new revenue stream for themselves.

I think the main point isn't the price but the amount of games we get. It's probably ok for top 4 fans, but for everyone else your team is only shown a handful of times a season, and half of them are when they are getting bent over by a top 4 side. I don't see why we don't get to choose what games we watch, it's really the least you should expect.

Hence my solution?...

You can contribute directly to YOUR club and not SKY by paying to watch the games YOUR club play, and watch YOUR team every game with technology now, you can hook your computer up to your television and watch the stream through your own TV if you don't wish to watch in on a computer.

borocooper wrote:I dont know if this is the case with other clubs but Boro fans cant even listen to the local radio commentary online anymore. "BoroWorld" made a deal with whoever it is that they make deals with so that BBC Radio Tees wouldnt allow their stuff to be streamed during the hours of a match. This was at a time when alot of people outside of the UK had only the one way of really listening..and it was via the online radio streams. First it was just free and easy to get on Century radio streams..then they made the deal with Boroworld so that was off limits. So then the only choice was to stream the local BBC commentary(which was pretty shit to be honest)..then they struck the deal that said Century werent allowed to commentate on the games anymore so they had exclusive rights to all Boro games..then they struck a deal with boroworld so that the only way you can listen is if you pay the Boro official site however much per month to listen to the radio stuff online.

Its ridiculous, its clearly just taking advantage of anyone who is desperate to listen abroad.

Same thing happened to man utd and century fm. It's absolute bullshit how they are trying to milk every fucking form of broadcasting.

oh the bastards

Here in Sweden I pay about £16 a month for a package, with Canalplus, that gets me three sports channels, five movie channels and a small assortment of other channels - the three sports channels show live, on average, seven or eight of the ten Premier League games that take place over any normal weekend (and they additionally show two or three Serie A games, whilst a terrestrial channel also shows Serie A games alongside La Liga football).

So I get a good number of Premier League games over here. However, Canalplus does not have the rights to any cup football - the League Cup, FA Cup and Champions League rights are with another digital company, called Viasat Sports - and whilst I think the monthly fee for Viasat Sports is no higher than the fee for Canalplus, and so not really prohibitive, I don't pay it because I'm not so interested in cup games in the main, and because it seems like quite a hassle to play around with two digital companies.

This isn't an ideal situation - I'd like to watch more Champions League football on the TV, for instance - ideally, all the football would be covered by one digital company, or would at least be available on the one contract, on the one digital box. More, Canalplus's Premier League coverage isn't great (the commentators and presenters and analysts are awful), and they don't do a highlights package at all, though they do repeat the matches they've shown during the week, and they often show in full, at a later point, the matches which weren't shown live.

I went to Ghana, for a month, about four years ago now - that is when I first realised that people in England actually get a bad deal when it comes to watching English football matches. Every single Premier League match was shown live on TV in Ghana.

It really does take the piss. As people have said, a lot of us watch streams to watch the games that Sky don't offer a service for. If they aren't going to provide this service, I don't think it is unreasonable for people to try to find other ways of watching the games. I know that it's not just Sky, but legislation they have to work within (such as with regards to 3pm games on Saturdays), but as usual we get such a bad service here for the prices we have to pay. And also, they may clamp down on pubs showing illegal streams, but they've been pricing so many pubs out of subscriptions by charging extortionate sums for their annual fees.

Bashmachkin wrote:

I went to Ghana, for a month, about four years ago now - that is when I first realised that people in England actually get a bad deal when it comes to watching English football matches. Every single Premier League match was shown live on TV in Ghana.

Yup , same station that provides to all of Africa, Dstv. Only Satellite company in Africa as far as I know. They show everything, all Italian, all English, last time I saw, about 6 spanish matches, plus all the assortment of CL, Uefa cup, Fa cup and miscelaneous like the old firm derby.

Pisses me off that USA I need 3 subscription channels just to watch the same shit I could on 1 susbscription in Africa.

I think they are showing limited matches this season throughout Africa but full in SA, you even get Portugese League, Ligue 1, Championship matches, League Cup, Bundesliga, England games, you name it and they have there.
There channel are called Ss right Robert, S1,S2,S3 etc.