Football and other premium TV being pirated at ‘industrial scale’

[Pelican Press 0]

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Football and other premium TV being pirated at ‘industrial scale’

Graham Fraser

Technology Reporter

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Liverpool won the English Premier League this season, and live football is the focus on many ******** streams

A lack of action by big tech firms is enabling the “industrial scale theft” of premium video services, especially live sport, a new report says.

The

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accuses

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,

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, Meta and

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of “ambivalence and inertia” over a problem it says costs broadcasters revenue and puts users at an increased risk of cyber-crime.

Gareth Sutcliffe and Ollie Meir, who authored the research, described the

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Fire Stick – which they argue is the device many people use to access ******** streams – as “a piracy enabler”.

BBC News has contacted

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,

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, Meta and

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for comment.

The piracy problem

Sports broadcasting is big business, with the

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across the world passing the $60bn (£44bn) mark last year.

The increasing cost of rights deals results in higher prices for fans at home, especially if they choose to pay for multiple services to watch their team play.

To get round this, some resort to ******** streams of big events.

Enders say there are often multiple streams of individual events – such as high profile football games – each of which can have tens of thousands of people watching them.

Bosses of big rights holders, Sky and DAZN, have previously warned piracy is causing a

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.

There is a risk for users too.

The Enders report says fans watching football matches, for instance, via ******** streams are typically providing information such as credit card details and email addresses, leaving them vulnerable to malware and phishing scams.

Fire Stick in the firing line

The researchers looked at the European market and focussed on

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,

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, Meta and

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.

While Meta, the owner of

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, was criticised for being the source of adverts for ******** streams, the technology of the other three was blamed for the increase in piracy.

The

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Fire Stick is a major cause of the problem, according to the report.

The device plugs into TVs and gives the viewer thousands of options to watch programmes from legitimate services including the BBC iPlayer and

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.

They are also being used to access ******** streams, particularly of live sport.

In November last year, a Liverpool man who sold Fire Stick devices he reconfigured to allow people to illegally stream Premier League

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.

After uploading the unauthorised services on the

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product, he advertised them on

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.

Another man from Liverpool was given a

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after modifying fire sticks and selling them on

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and WhatsApp.

According to data for the first quarter of this year, provided to Enders by Sky, 59% of people in *** who said they had watched pirated material in the last year while using a physical device said they had used a

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fire product.

The Enders report says the fire stick enables “billions of dollars in piracy” overall.

Depreciation of tech allows piracy to flourish

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The researchers also pointed to the role played by the “continued depreciation” of Digital Rights Management (DRM) systems, particularly those from

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and

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.

This technology enables high quality streaming of premium content to devices. Two of the big players are

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’s PlayReady and

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’s Widevine.

The authors argue the architecture of the DRM is largely unchanged, and due to a lack of maintenance by the big tech companies, PlayReady and Widevine “are now compromised across various security levels”.

Mr Sutcliffe and Mr Meir said this has had “a seismic impact across the industry, and ultimately given piracy the upper hand by enabling theft of the highest quality content”.

They added: “Over twenty years since launch, the DRM solutions provided by

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and

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are in steep decline.

“A complete overhaul of the technology architecture, licensing, and support model is needed. Lack of engagement with content owners indicates this a low priority.”

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#Football #premium #pirated #industrial #scale

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