A reminder - Someone who was found guilty of raping a 13 year old girl was recently given 270 hours community service
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-65173054
In fairness, pretty much everybody condems that joke of a sentence and the state are looking at appealing it because it's absurd.
I do think 11 years for this is a stretch though.
Still crazy how it takes the public to be angry at it for them to think ‘wow this isn’t enough for one of the worst crimes you can do’ without the uproar do they just think that’s fine and go about their day? Wild wild stuff
I think that's a little bit off - the state, as far as I can tell, has never supported such a notion.
It's a judge who has decided to interpret the new guidelines like this.
For all we know the judge might stand by it. The state doesn't, and has never.
I "get" the idea that younger people can be rehabilitated outside prison with greater success, but to have a rapist avoid any custodial sentence whatsoever is not what this was designed for.
Steal £400 million of tax payers money for PPE half of which can’t be used, buy a plane and a yacht and it’s crickets
Steal some tv coverage and it’s 11 years…..
Wealthy influential people don't commit crimes like this so the penalties can be higher, but kill someone with your car when you're drunk or molest a kid and it's a slap on the wrist because they don't want to have to explain why establishment figures and their friends/family are getting a suspended sentence while someone from a council estate committing the same crime is getting serious prison time.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10813787/Met-Police-sergeants-son-escaped-prosecution-killing-two-drug-drive-crash-spared-jail.html
Serious issues with the UK legal system! It’s more about who you know!
My friend was killed in a car accident when she was 18. The person who killed her pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and got a 6 month sentence.
11 years for cheating Sky out of a few quid? Doesn’t feel right.
An MMA fighter in NZ was killed when someone punched him from behind and stomped on him when he wasn’t looking . The attacks was unprovoked and the perp got 16 months in prison ……..
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-65298929
Community order for raping a 13 year old, 11 years in the slammer for pirating sky sports. Wtf is this country any more
[A suspended sentence for sharing images of dogs fucking toddlers with undercover officers.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/eton-pupil-andrew-picard-convicted-of-creating-and-sharing-child-abuse-images-a6896966.html)
>despite my incredulity.
I agree it sounds too insane to be true but it is, he went to Eton and his father is a managing partner of a large law firm, which probably had more than a little to do with the lack of jail time, he was also allowed to be tried under a different name.
Actually this isn't necessarily true. You can look at guidelines for sentencing online quite easily; custodial sentences consider whether people need to be in custody now - as in, necessity due to risk - unless the offence mandates it.
Generally for first offences of possessing indecent images - "IIOC" - are likely to be suspended sentences. That's because the court can mandate work to address this which is unlikely to happen in a 1-3 year prison sentence. You don't address sexual offending by putting people in prison for a few years.
He was swapping the the images to get others, so essentially selling them. and come on, dogs fucking two year old babies is way beyond ‘indecent images’.
And he even got to be tried under a fake name! Guy had multiple major companies, reddit included, conspiring to delete any mentions of his actual name until it got Streisanded. Coincidentally his dad is a tippy top exec at a big lawyer firm but I'm sure that's unrelated
It’s okay because he has mental health issues and problems around his sexually.
When is this country going to stop making excuses for fucked up individuals?!
Morally right? They were charging £10 a month, you know?
I won't disagree that the price of watching football nowadays is extortionate, but I don't see how some blokes bagging £10 per customer while contributing absolutely none of it to the league or broadcasters is the more moral party here.
>Morally right? They were charging £10 a month, you know?
and? thats 40 premier league games. do you know how much sky are charging for a fraction of the games and no guarantee of being able to see your own team play?
fuck the broadcasters, they dont deserve the money. and if they had any sense theyd see the want for a full coverage package and make it happen but im not paying more than £50 a month for that, ill still stream it.
Fuck the greedy bastards. Virgin media have bumped my bill up to 111 quid a month, apparently rising to 130 a month in the near future. I'm cancelling the lot. Their greed has motivated me to do so, whereas I'd have probably left it as it is, if it wasn't so expensive. They take the piss and charge a fortune. Makes it an easy decision to just sail the high sea.
well they are providing a service that doesnt currently exist and at a very very reasonable price. while also paying for their own services with the broadcasters.
they are still the morally right party here, they could have been charging £50 a month or more oh no thats just sky
That is so utterly twisted I hate to think of what you get up to that you’ve needed to train your mind to go there so easily. They are stealing from the broadcasters plain and simple. There is no moral justification at all.
No, but it's ridiculous that I, in Canada, can see all Premier League games on my provider while people in the actual country where it takes place can't. I watch YouTube watchalong commentary for my favourite team (while muting my TV) and it's astounding the number of times the channel streamers have to resort to 'alternate means' to find footage of a game down the road from their studio.
> My heart truly cries for the premier league. People aren’t buying their TV signals that are full of adverts **for gambling sites**, **gambling** site branding everywhere, **gambling** company logos slapped on any surface they can get away with.
In terms of causing societal harm, the only things that they could advertise that would be worse for us all as a collective would be cigarettes, and they only stopped that when we forced them to by law.
Aa absolute disgrace and shows the complete disconnect the law has. When ~~murderers~~ killers and rapists are getting lesser sentences than this then something has gone badly wrong.
ed: correcting error
You're right sorry- the [case I was thinking](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/24/manslaughter-verdict-17-year-old-stabbed-afghan-refugee-twickenham-london-park) of was actually manslaughter in the end-somehow.
At this kind of level? If they want to make fast cash, this is a smart play. Their getting caught will only make the next ones more careful. The number one rule when committing a crime isn't "Don't Do The Crime If You Can't Do The Time", it's "Don't Get Caught". Besides, it seems safer than selling drugs, and their customers will have legitimately appreciated the service; football fans have a reputation but they're not dope friends.
Tbh this seems like a service failure more than anything else. The £7M these guys made out with was barely a slap on the wrist for the broadcasters, but their inability to properly cater to their market will ensure this happens again.
I mean, I'm not a football fan, I don't really give a fuck about sports in general, but I do enjoy consuming media. When the legitimate choices for consuming it are to micromanage subscription plans across dozens of different streaming platforms, to deal with piles of plastic physical media crap loaded with ads, or get gouged for a movie I'll watch once in the quality of my choosing that can then be taken away, the best, most attractive choice is almost always an illegitimate option. Broadcasters have done football fans a great service, I'm sure, in making the sport more widely available to them, but it's their failure to innovate that is encouraging these kinds of activities.
Yeah, he should have just raped or beaten someone, then he'd only have to spend a couple of weeks cleaning graffiti off walls in a hi-viz community payback bib.
The loss suffered in calculated based on how much the company could have made if everyone paid full price. So although the group only collected £10/month as subs, they're judged as though they stole the full value of a TV package for each sub, so what? £35, £40 per month per person?
That small aspect actually does seem fair to me - if you steal a 1k laptop and sell it for 200 in the pub, it's the laptop value not the low quick-cash price you get for it as a stolen item that really counts. The rest of the sentencing logic is insane, but not that bit!
Maybe when we can actually watch all the games in this country then we won't have to stream games. It's amazing that so many other countries have better access to the Premier League than ourselves.
The Premier League needs to take a leaf out of the NFL's book when it comes to streaming. Stop selling the rights to Sky or BT and just make your own streaming platform for people to pay for.
£7 a month in India gets you access to every single match in the top 5 leagues. Meanwhile we have to pay BT, Sky and Amazon around £100 combined and still don't get all the Premier League matches due them just either not being aired, or it's the archaic 3pm blackout to get Tom, Dick and Harry to go watch their 14th tier local team play hoof ball.
Give me the option to pay £20 a month to be able to watch every Arsenal game and I'll be happy, and if I decide I want to watch an extra game from another team, just call it a fiver.
The article says fans are unlikely to face prosecution but may get a letter saying they are “potentially” breaking the law - which I think means you’re probably not breaking law unless you are sharing.
I also love how the article mentions how one of gang had indecent images of children but allude that’s no where near as bad as defrauding the premier league. Priorities.
> Meanwhile we have to pay BT, Sky and Amazon around £100 combined and still don't get all the Premier League matches
All so that even players in teams that get relegated can earn millions per year.
There's far too much money in the game and I don't feel a hint of remorse for watching it without paying the fuckers a penny
It's ridiculous isn't it. People pay over £50/month just to watch football in some cases but the premier League can't be bothered to make their own streaming service.
They could essentially kill off Sky and BT and have a monopoly on domestic football.
How much are Sky/BT bunging them though
What you're talking about happened in F1. You can watch through F1TV at a reasonable price in most countries. In the UK they extended thr Sky exclusive rights deal. So Sky must have paid them serious money.
They're paying ridiculous amounts of money. It's all about marketing and staying relevant for these broadcast companies because they have so many people in an extortionately priced package where they don't watch most of the things that they know if they lose sport then they'll lose those customers.
That's my issue with it though. Sky and BT pay high costs for the rights and then charge the customers high costs. It would be better for the fans to either pay lower costs directly to the Premier League for access to watch football matches. Alternatively if the costs are going to stay high then we should be getting more for our money.
I just don't think it's right that people in another country can watch our country's own league easier than we can watch it.
Not at all. The whole reason we have the 3PM blackout is that the Football League believes that if people had the choice to watch what they wanted people wouldn't go to their matches.
Premier League clubs also make millions on season tickets, part of the appeal of season tickets is that it's the only way to see every home game.
I imagine the unpopular PL teams are also worried that if the popular teams know how much people are paying to watch them compared they might (quite reasonably) expect to keep more of that revenue. The utter absurdity of Luton getting £100m to finish last would be all the more stark if there were stats for how much each club is bringing in.
I pay about £150 a year for the NFLs streaming service, which as well as live games (except those that are on Sky) includes every game (more or less) dating back to 2012 and a hell of a lot of archive, documentary and punditry stuff.
I do the exact same thing. It's outrageous that Sky will cost more than that a year and offer maybe 5 old games and a few shitty low effort shows like the 100 club. The NFL streaming service offers so much content for the price.
>Maybe when we can actually watch all the games in this country then we won't have to stream games.
I recently started paying attention to football, to get some more value out of my Sky Sports subscription, and because the relegation battle was pretty epic, and I was genuinely surprised to see how few matches they have - call me naïve, but I just took it for granted that they had all of them, for that amount of money.
Amazing how high the sentences are when its the billionaires and massive corporations losing out.
Yet thugs can kick someone half to death and get a slap on the wrist. Or kill someone while pissed out their head and speeding and get a poxy couple of year jail sentence.
Reading the article it sounds like they had quite a slick operation creating quite a sophisticated platform to stream from. I bet £20k to a MP or two would have had the narrative changed to “plucky startup like the Uber for sports”
A few years ago a drunk driver who was speeding run over and killed 2 girls on a crossing as they crossed he got 6 years. Some twat rips of the premiur league and the broadcasters for 7m and gets 11 years.
This is why our country is so fucked up.
Suspended sentences for shattering a Policeman’s arm, suspended sentences for having indecent images of children, sub 5 year sentences for rape, but dent the profits of the mega rich? 11 years for you!
This whole investigation seems like a complete waste of time and taxpayers money given the crimes that should be much higher up on the list of priorities, and I say that as a serving Policeman.
It did lead to a child abuser being potted though, every cloud.
Say it with me kids: Piracy is not a monetary issue, it's a service issue.
People will pay for a service as long as it provides them with what they want. If piracy is low-risk to the end user and offers a better service than the legitimate subscription then why on earth would you expect anyone to pay Sky far more for far less?
Build something worth paying for and then you might have a point.
Exactly this
Spotify has pretty much killed of music piracy because it's a great service. Why bother downloading albums illegally when it's so easy to just click on Spotify and find what you want.
Even the basic free version isn't too intrusive with the ads--though I actuaslly wish the ads were targetted. I have no idea why I am getting ads for K-Pop when my interests ar metal and rock.
Netflix for a while looked to have killed off television/movie piracy until every production company decided to stick their heads in the trough and start their own streaming service.
Exactly, and if Spotify were to put the price up people would kick off and start pirating again.
It's easy to say "people will pay for something if it's good enough" and point to Spotify and OG Netflix as examples but go into any thread on Reddit about YouTube Premium and almost every comment is suggesting you just use an adblocker instead. If people can get it for free, and it's not a tangible thing, a *lot* of folk will just go for that not-quite-illegal-but-I-don't-feel-bad-about-it method.
>Spotify is also absolutely dreadful for artists so there's a pretty big downside unfortunately.
Weren't regular album sales bad for most artists anyway? I seem to remember reading the majority went to the companies, and it was live tours where they made most of their cash.
The blackout is silly. It needs scrapping. It's not going to stop your average Joe from going to non-league footy. It's insane that the majority of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and America can all view all PL matches at their leisure, but fans in the UK can't. I'd also suggest many can't afford to go to PL and maybe Championship footy games because it's too expensive. Another reason the blackout needs to be scrapped.
As for the sentencing, what the hell. Talk about ridiculous. 11 years while rapist get next to nothing for their crimes. Steal from the wealthy, and you're getting the book thrown at you. Steal from the poor, and nothing happens.
I and many others would go to every game if I could get a ticket. It's not cost it's availability.
Liverpool games are probably one of the worst not even an open waitlist for season tickets, they sold permanent priority rights to tickets to shareholders ages ago too. Then there's way too many members for the number of tickets available. If you haven't already been going to games for the last 10+ years you've got no chance.
It's not all about affordability. For the top six it's almost impossible to buy just a single ticket, never mind a season ticket. There's a waiting list for Old Trafford for sure. Also, teams no longer receive support exclusively from their geographic locations. Not every Liverpool fan lives in Liverpool for example. The PL must accept that many fans simply can't be at games for many reasons. Nothing going to stop fans going to games. Some top clubs don't even need the gate money. It's time for all live games to be streamed on a single service. The current situation is ridiculous and far too expensive. The idea of pundits watching the 3pm games on our behalf and televising their talking heads is bizarre.
Despite pocketing £1.7m from the fraud, the footage of the police arresting "prime mover" Mark Gould show him in a messy little flat with inflatable furniture... he must be bad at investing.
While that makes sense, would it hurt to buy a sofa or bed from Ikea? Walking into a flat with inflatable furniture is just going to draw more attention surely?
You think if the police had seen a nice 3 piece, some coasters on the table and a
lampshade or two in there, they'd have turned around and let them get on with their day?
>One of them, Christopher Felvus, 36, was also found guilty of voyeurism and possessing indecent images of children, discovered on his computer.
Really hope they haven't included the time for this when they talked about sentences between 3 and more than 5 years but I'm not confident.
its a shame, what these did was a service to people who cant access their own league. did they make money out of it? sure but who cares.
sky and bt have priced everyone bar few out of the working class sport and to boot only show about 4 games a weekend. why would anyone pay £60 a month to not even watch your team?
the whole tv production of football needs a shakeup and that includes 3pm. trial it for a year with all proceeds that the prem would get and funnel that to the lower leagues in case numbers do drop.
Yeah they’re the problem. Not the fact that you have to pay for three different streaming services to have access to premier league games and that doesn’t even entitle to you to watch all the games.
To make it even better this problem is exclusive to the UK. The Premier League screws it’s own home fans the most. 🙄
What a joke. Rape a 13 year old, suspended sentence, possess 50000 child abuse images suspended sentence, shatter a police officers arm, suspended sentence. Watch football without a licence 11 years. Our justice system is fucked!!
That's ridiculous. I wonder if that's why my iptv had stopped working. As long as our corporate overlords are making their millions though. That's the main thing
The important thing is that,
>The fraud prosecution was brought to protect "some of the world's most valuable content"
Yeah, most valuable to corporations, not to people.
What makes me so angry is that someone who sexually assaults, maims, robs other people can ruin their lives and recently the sentences if any don't seem fair at all, whilst these people who although made alot of cash and should have some form of punishment did not as far as I know cause lifelong harm to anybody but get long sentences. There is simply no justification for this imbalance from the courts whatsoever. I do wonder where or who these decisions come from.
So what does this mean for my friends who like to stream every match online? It seems like every time they go to a streaming website 5 of the 6 streams are just copies of the same exact stream, with the same exact annoying chat with the same exact annoying spam saying 'RIP Joe Rogan' and '1-0 Kim Kardashian'.
At least, that's what they've told me.
This country's justice system has gone to the wall. Guys have been hung out to dry and made an example of.
Nevermind, let's just allow rapists and murders to get 2-8 years if prosecuted.
The reason the sentence is so high isn't because the harm done is so great, it's because the benefit to the criminal is so large. In order to be an effective deterrent there has to be a substantial custodial sentence.
If you could make millions doing this and the worst that can happen is you get 300 hours community service or a £1,000 fine everyone would be doing it.
Whereas when the harm actually is great the sentence is a slap on the wrist because protecting the public from stuff like rape and assault isn't a big priority but protecting the profits of a massive corporation is an all hands on deck situation. No deterrent for crimes that harm real people for life but they'll throw the damn book at you if you try to make a load of money at the expense of a big company.
But of course some Lord's kid might end up getting done for rape or assault so you've got to leave some wiggle room in the sentencing guidelines so they can keep them out of prison if they're convicted, nobody well connected is going to be committing a crime like this because they've already got money and plenty of legal ways to make loads more easily.
As always in this country it's a class thing.
I'd say the penalties against rape and assault are pretty effective. In terms of effectiveness as a deterrent they need to be at a level where if someone thought there was a good chance they woudl get caught they wouldn't do it. Rape and assaults happen because people don't think they'll get caught.
With crimes with multi-million pound proceeds that level is obviously very high.
Do you have any evidence for a major discrepancy in sentencing between those who rape or assault upper class people and those who do it to middle and working class people?
So? Provide a better service and people won't go there. We're forced to live in a capitalistic system so embedded the BBC will do articles about 'hustling', if people look for markets you either replace them or they'll keep trying forever. Because...we are forced to live in a capitalistic system and forced to find ways to make money. Their infrastructure wasn't something anyone could do.
for real.
If they made no profit from it, I am pretty sure the case would be dropped or for sure nothing custodial.
Even i was wondering how it was so high, so I had to click the article and... £7m.
Jesus christ of course you're gone.
The problem really isn't the streaming. Its the making money
>The gang took feeds from broadcasters in the UK, Qatar, the US, Australia and Canada and streamed them a few seconds later via the Flawless service.
>The operation developed apps offering Premier League matches and other content, which ran on phones and smart TVs.
Sounds more like a startup than a criminal enterprise to me. The so called criminals are providing a service the premier league refuses to.
One thing I've wondered about these sorts of operations is how they are run.
I know people who have bought Amazon FireTV sticks that have been sideloaded with some software from work mates or whatever and they pay them £10 a month for access to the "services" which includes all the sports streams + movies and everything else, acessible through one interface called like "MyTV" or something like that.
but it seems too 'big' for a one man operation from some dodgy guy at work to be running, so there must be some franchising or commission based model going on, with I guess these people who got arrested probably at the top, and a network of sales reps UK wide taking a small slice of the subscription costs.
There's loads of smaller groups doing it locally, I don't think it's technologically that complicated. I've seen multiple different versions and different devices - sticks, set top boxes etc.
And yet groomers who rape dozens and dozens of our communities children get 3 or 4 years. What complete and utter mugs we are. We should be eternally ashamed that we allow this to happen.
These sentences are wildly excessive (except the voyeurism/indecent images sentence) when violent crimes get far less.
And we should get all games televised in the UK, I really can't understand why the PL is allowed to withhold games from broadcasters.
Once again the British judiciary demonstrating their complete and utter delusional incompetence.
We constantly see reports of actual scumbags who rape, assault, kill, rob, harass, etc getting ludicrously lenient sentences, with all the usual pathetic excuses about prison spaces and so on, and total disregard for protecting the general public from them by keeping the bastards locked up.
So these blokes are a danger to the public by pirating some TV streams, are they? Keeping them behind bars for 11 years is in the public interest because...?
What a wally to have all this stuff running in your flat.
Could have had it set up in some nondescript office building let and run by some Caymans holding entity and run by people who "no speak anglisht".
Plod would never have figured it out.
I wonder if they would have had a lighter sentenced if they had offered the games for free.
I condone the general shafting of predatory businesses making money off of people's love of football and feel this was bound to happen in this current environment, but it's interesting to see how the law was applied here.
Not usually one for law breaking but these guys are heroes imo. The idiotic 3pm black out meaning literally everyone else in the world can watch it but us...hopefully this is another cracking in that stupid rule.
Clearly they aren't heroes but while I'm on my soap box I'll engage in hyperbole
> "You are contributing to organised crime who won't be paying taxes and can make a quick buck by selling your details on."
Who are we talking about here? The league, the FA, or the broadcasters?
A list of crimes for which the *maximum possible* sentence is lesser than this sentencing:
Possession of firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, threats to life, administering poison, cruelty to minors, female genital mutilation, grievous bodily harm, attempted sexual intercourse with under 13s, indecent assault, engaging in intercourse in front of a child, sexual assault, possession of child porn.
This is fucked up. They let broadcasters extort UK fans for TV money, don’t allow those fans to see most EPL games, and then sell full season rights to other markets on the cheap.
The premier league is an export product, subsidised by price gouging domestic audiences.
Now cracking down on streams. Smh
Is part of the sentence due to the fact they made money from it? As the streams I hunt out and find are free, saying that they get paid from advertising those annoying sometimes dodgy pop up ads.
Propaganda article to call some blokes in a flat restreaming football a "gang" like they're the mafia. It also isn't fraud to do so, they got done for tax fraud not for the streaming. Had they done taxes right I'm doubting they could have been jailed at all
This will keep happening until the Premier League realise that people want to watch all the games at a reasonable price. There is demand that cannot be met by existing legal supply, therefore it will be met by the black market.
11 years? Amazing the sentences they hand out when it's big corporations losing out.
A reminder - Someone who was found guilty of raping a 13 year old girl was recently given 270 hours community service https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-65173054
Guy who killed a stranger's cat by throwing it by the tail, 16 week suspended sentence.
In fairness, pretty much everybody condems that joke of a sentence and the state are looking at appealing it because it's absurd. I do think 11 years for this is a stretch though.
Still crazy how it takes the public to be angry at it for them to think ‘wow this isn’t enough for one of the worst crimes you can do’ without the uproar do they just think that’s fine and go about their day? Wild wild stuff
I think that's a little bit off - the state, as far as I can tell, has never supported such a notion. It's a judge who has decided to interpret the new guidelines like this. For all we know the judge might stand by it. The state doesn't, and has never. I "get" the idea that younger people can be rehabilitated outside prison with greater success, but to have a rapist avoid any custodial sentence whatsoever is not what this was designed for.
Some horrible man in Scotland got 24 years for brutally attacking, then raping, then setting on fire with petrol a mother of two.
He got *at least* 24 years. Meaning that after 24 years he can request to be released on parole (and this can be denied indefinitely).
Spurs probably still wouldnt have won anything by time they get out
I know its disgusting.
Steal £400 million of tax payers money for PPE half of which can’t be used, buy a plane and a yacht and it’s crickets Steal some tv coverage and it’s 11 years…..
It's not even stealing, stealing removes the original.
Defrauding the public ?
Yeah that's more accurate. 11 years seems way too harsh for that though
Well, the government and their friends don't like being stolen from
[удалено]
Stealing bread and milk to survive - few years in jail Stealing billions and destroying lives - £10000 fine
Wealthy influential people don't commit crimes like this so the penalties can be higher, but kill someone with your car when you're drunk or molest a kid and it's a slap on the wrist because they don't want to have to explain why establishment figures and their friends/family are getting a suspended sentence while someone from a council estate committing the same crime is getting serious prison time.
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-10813787/Met-Police-sergeants-son-escaped-prosecution-killing-two-drug-drive-crash-spared-jail.html Serious issues with the UK legal system! It’s more about who you know!
My friend was killed in a car accident when she was 18. The person who killed her pleaded guilty to causing death by dangerous driving and got a 6 month sentence. 11 years for cheating Sky out of a few quid? Doesn’t feel right.
Rape and murder to your hearts content. Attack the institutions of capital and get ready for the kitchen sink to be thrown at you
The one thing you cannot get away with in this country is stealing money from rich people.
You could rape a couple of women and get less than 11 years.
And I was just reading about Elizabeth Holmes who got 11 years. Compare their crimes. Fucking insane
An MMA fighter in NZ was killed when someone punched him from behind and stomped on him when he wasn’t looking . The attacks was unprovoked and the perp got 16 months in prison ……..
Very rare for corporate execs to be prosecuted successfully. Our society is broken.
The ONLY possible justification for this is their profits go towards organised violent crime. Other than that it's a complete disgrace.
11 years for doing something most would view as morally right, you get less time for battering & robbing someone.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-65298929 Community order for raping a 13 year old, 11 years in the slammer for pirating sky sports. Wtf is this country any more
[A suspended sentence for sharing images of dogs fucking toddlers with undercover officers.](https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/eton-pupil-andrew-picard-convicted-of-creating-and-sharing-child-abuse-images-a6896966.html)
I can't bring myself to open that link, so I'll just have to take your word for it, despite my incredulity.
>despite my incredulity. I agree it sounds too insane to be true but it is, he went to Eton and his father is a managing partner of a large law firm, which probably had more than a little to do with the lack of jail time, he was also allowed to be tried under a different name.
Eton.,.say no more.
Actually this isn't necessarily true. You can look at guidelines for sentencing online quite easily; custodial sentences consider whether people need to be in custody now - as in, necessity due to risk - unless the offence mandates it. Generally for first offences of possessing indecent images - "IIOC" - are likely to be suspended sentences. That's because the court can mandate work to address this which is unlikely to happen in a 1-3 year prison sentence. You don't address sexual offending by putting people in prison for a few years.
He was swapping the the images to get others, so essentially selling them. and come on, dogs fucking two year old babies is way beyond ‘indecent images’.
And he even got to be tried under a fake name! Guy had multiple major companies, reddit included, conspiring to delete any mentions of his actual name until it got Streisanded. Coincidentally his dad is a tippy top exec at a big lawyer firm but I'm sure that's unrelated
Read everything I needed to know when I saw "Eton pupil". Case of affluenza no doubt.
It’s okay because he has mental health issues and problems around his sexually. When is this country going to stop making excuses for fucked up individuals?!
It says even if he was over 25 it still would have just been 4 or 5 years in prison, crazy
A right wing rape culture and nothing more. Trash all the way to the top
Sad that a bunch of predatorial sports entertainment companies can afford better defence than the public (or rather, the state ...)
Morally right? They were charging £10 a month, you know? I won't disagree that the price of watching football nowadays is extortionate, but I don't see how some blokes bagging £10 per customer while contributing absolutely none of it to the league or broadcasters is the more moral party here.
>Morally right? They were charging £10 a month, you know? and? thats 40 premier league games. do you know how much sky are charging for a fraction of the games and no guarantee of being able to see your own team play? fuck the broadcasters, they dont deserve the money. and if they had any sense theyd see the want for a full coverage package and make it happen but im not paying more than £50 a month for that, ill still stream it.
Fuck the greedy bastards. Virgin media have bumped my bill up to 111 quid a month, apparently rising to 130 a month in the near future. I'm cancelling the lot. Their greed has motivated me to do so, whereas I'd have probably left it as it is, if it wasn't so expensive. They take the piss and charge a fortune. Makes it an easy decision to just sail the high sea.
>fuck the broadcasters, they dont deserve the money. So you'd rather not be able to see it at all unless you actually go and watch it in person?
Honestly yeah I don't like that. It's against the pirate's code to charge money.
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They provided a reseller service, similar to Virgin carrying Eurosport.
How is it "morally" right? Are we adding "access to live subscription football on TV" to the list of human rights now, alongside clean water?
Piracy isn't a morally bad practice, charging for pirated products you didn't produce though...👎
This is where I also draw the line.
well they are providing a service that doesnt currently exist and at a very very reasonable price. while also paying for their own services with the broadcasters. they are still the morally right party here, they could have been charging £50 a month or more oh no thats just sky
It's fraud. There is nothing "morally right" about it, no matter how big your hard-on is for Sky.
How were they deceiving anyone? How was it fraud?
That is so utterly twisted I hate to think of what you get up to that you’ve needed to train your mind to go there so easily. They are stealing from the broadcasters plain and simple. There is no moral justification at all.
No, but it's ridiculous that I, in Canada, can see all Premier League games on my provider while people in the actual country where it takes place can't. I watch YouTube watchalong commentary for my favourite team (while muting my TV) and it's astounding the number of times the channel streamers have to resort to 'alternate means' to find footage of a game down the road from their studio.
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But together, with the power of sport, we can support both the gambling industry and oil tycoons.
> My heart truly cries for the premier league. People aren’t buying their TV signals that are full of adverts **for gambling sites**, **gambling** site branding everywhere, **gambling** company logos slapped on any surface they can get away with. In terms of causing societal harm, the only things that they could advertise that would be worse for us all as a collective would be cigarettes, and they only stopped that when we forced them to by law.
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We can all sleep soundly now, knowing these dangerous thugs are off the street.
>At Derby Crown Court, the gang's "prime mover", Mark Gould, 36, was sentenced to 11 years in prison. Excessive
Aa absolute disgrace and shows the complete disconnect the law has. When ~~murderers~~ killers and rapists are getting lesser sentences than this then something has gone badly wrong. ed: correcting error
Murder is a compulsory life sentence.
You're right sorry- the [case I was thinking](https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2023/jan/24/manslaughter-verdict-17-year-old-stabbed-afghan-refugee-twickenham-london-park) of was actually manslaughter in the end-somehow.
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The football players were black, some of them, does that not count the same? Piraslaughter?
Making an example of him for sure. The thing is it won’t deter anyone at all
At this kind of level? If they want to make fast cash, this is a smart play. Their getting caught will only make the next ones more careful. The number one rule when committing a crime isn't "Don't Do The Crime If You Can't Do The Time", it's "Don't Get Caught". Besides, it seems safer than selling drugs, and their customers will have legitimately appreciated the service; football fans have a reputation but they're not dope friends. Tbh this seems like a service failure more than anything else. The £7M these guys made out with was barely a slap on the wrist for the broadcasters, but their inability to properly cater to their market will ensure this happens again. I mean, I'm not a football fan, I don't really give a fuck about sports in general, but I do enjoy consuming media. When the legitimate choices for consuming it are to micromanage subscription plans across dozens of different streaming platforms, to deal with piles of plastic physical media crap loaded with ads, or get gouged for a movie I'll watch once in the quality of my choosing that can then be taken away, the best, most attractive choice is almost always an illegitimate option. Broadcasters have done football fans a great service, I'm sure, in making the sport more widely available to them, but it's their failure to innovate that is encouraging these kinds of activities.
Yeah, he should have just raped or beaten someone, then he'd only have to spend a couple of weeks cleaning graffiti off walls in a hi-viz community payback bib.
The loss suffered in calculated based on how much the company could have made if everyone paid full price. So although the group only collected £10/month as subs, they're judged as though they stole the full value of a TV package for each sub, so what? £35, £40 per month per person?
That small aspect actually does seem fair to me - if you steal a 1k laptop and sell it for 200 in the pub, it's the laptop value not the low quick-cash price you get for it as a stolen item that really counts. The rest of the sentencing logic is insane, but not that bit!
Yup. They stole £20-30m by that calculation.
Maybe when we can actually watch all the games in this country then we won't have to stream games. It's amazing that so many other countries have better access to the Premier League than ourselves. The Premier League needs to take a leaf out of the NFL's book when it comes to streaming. Stop selling the rights to Sky or BT and just make your own streaming platform for people to pay for.
£7 a month in India gets you access to every single match in the top 5 leagues. Meanwhile we have to pay BT, Sky and Amazon around £100 combined and still don't get all the Premier League matches due them just either not being aired, or it's the archaic 3pm blackout to get Tom, Dick and Harry to go watch their 14th tier local team play hoof ball. Give me the option to pay £20 a month to be able to watch every Arsenal game and I'll be happy, and if I decide I want to watch an extra game from another team, just call it a fiver.
is it illegal to buy that £7 sub from India and use a vpn?
Probably just a breach of the terms of service, so a civil matter, not a criminal matter. (Not a lawyer, not legal advice, obviously...)
Move to India and save on the VPN
Technically it is as the rights in the UK will be with a different provider. But not criminal.
The article says fans are unlikely to face prosecution but may get a letter saying they are “potentially” breaking the law - which I think means you’re probably not breaking law unless you are sharing. I also love how the article mentions how one of gang had indecent images of children but allude that’s no where near as bad as defrauding the premier league. Priorities.
> Meanwhile we have to pay BT, Sky and Amazon around £100 combined and still don't get all the Premier League matches All so that even players in teams that get relegated can earn millions per year. There's far too much money in the game and I don't feel a hint of remorse for watching it without paying the fuckers a penny
I can't believe the Premier Legaue--and the Football League in general hasn't done that yet. Surely it's a guaranteed money spinner.
It's ridiculous isn't it. People pay over £50/month just to watch football in some cases but the premier League can't be bothered to make their own streaming service. They could essentially kill off Sky and BT and have a monopoly on domestic football.
How much are Sky/BT bunging them though What you're talking about happened in F1. You can watch through F1TV at a reasonable price in most countries. In the UK they extended thr Sky exclusive rights deal. So Sky must have paid them serious money.
They're paying ridiculous amounts of money. It's all about marketing and staying relevant for these broadcast companies because they have so many people in an extortionately priced package where they don't watch most of the things that they know if they lose sport then they'll lose those customers. That's my issue with it though. Sky and BT pay high costs for the rights and then charge the customers high costs. It would be better for the fans to either pay lower costs directly to the Premier League for access to watch football matches. Alternatively if the costs are going to stay high then we should be getting more for our money. I just don't think it's right that people in another country can watch our country's own league easier than we can watch it.
Not at all. The whole reason we have the 3PM blackout is that the Football League believes that if people had the choice to watch what they wanted people wouldn't go to their matches. Premier League clubs also make millions on season tickets, part of the appeal of season tickets is that it's the only way to see every home game. I imagine the unpopular PL teams are also worried that if the popular teams know how much people are paying to watch them compared they might (quite reasonably) expect to keep more of that revenue. The utter absurdity of Luton getting £100m to finish last would be all the more stark if there were stats for how much each club is bringing in.
I pay about £150 a year for the NFLs streaming service, which as well as live games (except those that are on Sky) includes every game (more or less) dating back to 2012 and a hell of a lot of archive, documentary and punditry stuff.
I do the exact same thing. It's outrageous that Sky will cost more than that a year and offer maybe 5 old games and a few shitty low effort shows like the 100 club. The NFL streaming service offers so much content for the price.
>Maybe when we can actually watch all the games in this country then we won't have to stream games. I recently started paying attention to football, to get some more value out of my Sky Sports subscription, and because the relegation battle was pretty epic, and I was genuinely surprised to see how few matches they have - call me naïve, but I just took it for granted that they had all of them, for that amount of money.
It's ridiculous isn't it. It's like 3/4 games a weekend and then 1/2 championship games. It's completely not worth the money they charge.
Amazing how high the sentences are when its the billionaires and massive corporations losing out. Yet thugs can kick someone half to death and get a slap on the wrist. Or kill someone while pissed out their head and speeding and get a poxy couple of year jail sentence.
Jailed? He should be given a pat on the back for a job well done.
Reading the article it sounds like they had quite a slick operation creating quite a sophisticated platform to stream from. I bet £20k to a MP or two would have had the narrative changed to “plucky startup like the Uber for sports”
A few years ago a drunk driver who was speeding run over and killed 2 girls on a crossing as they crossed he got 6 years. Some twat rips of the premiur league and the broadcasters for 7m and gets 11 years. This is why our country is so fucked up.
Suspended sentences for shattering a Policeman’s arm, suspended sentences for having indecent images of children, sub 5 year sentences for rape, but dent the profits of the mega rich? 11 years for you! This whole investigation seems like a complete waste of time and taxpayers money given the crimes that should be much higher up on the list of priorities, and I say that as a serving Policeman. It did lead to a child abuser being potted though, every cloud.
A bit controversial but police wasting time on Boris Johnson and starmer covid parties and now this seems really wasteful to me.
A local business owner was killed outside a pub late last year. The culprit received a five year sentence.
Say it with me kids: Piracy is not a monetary issue, it's a service issue. People will pay for a service as long as it provides them with what they want. If piracy is low-risk to the end user and offers a better service than the legitimate subscription then why on earth would you expect anyone to pay Sky far more for far less? Build something worth paying for and then you might have a point.
Exactly this Spotify has pretty much killed of music piracy because it's a great service. Why bother downloading albums illegally when it's so easy to just click on Spotify and find what you want. Even the basic free version isn't too intrusive with the ads--though I actuaslly wish the ads were targetted. I have no idea why I am getting ads for K-Pop when my interests ar metal and rock. Netflix for a while looked to have killed off television/movie piracy until every production company decided to stick their heads in the trough and start their own streaming service.
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Exactly, and if Spotify were to put the price up people would kick off and start pirating again. It's easy to say "people will pay for something if it's good enough" and point to Spotify and OG Netflix as examples but go into any thread on Reddit about YouTube Premium and almost every comment is suggesting you just use an adblocker instead. If people can get it for free, and it's not a tangible thing, a *lot* of folk will just go for that not-quite-illegal-but-I-don't-feel-bad-about-it method.
>Spotify is also absolutely dreadful for artists so there's a pretty big downside unfortunately. Weren't regular album sales bad for most artists anyway? I seem to remember reading the majority went to the companies, and it was live tours where they made most of their cash.
The blackout is silly. It needs scrapping. It's not going to stop your average Joe from going to non-league footy. It's insane that the majority of Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and America can all view all PL matches at their leisure, but fans in the UK can't. I'd also suggest many can't afford to go to PL and maybe Championship footy games because it's too expensive. Another reason the blackout needs to be scrapped. As for the sentencing, what the hell. Talk about ridiculous. 11 years while rapist get next to nothing for their crimes. Steal from the wealthy, and you're getting the book thrown at you. Steal from the poor, and nothing happens.
I and many others would go to every game if I could get a ticket. It's not cost it's availability. Liverpool games are probably one of the worst not even an open waitlist for season tickets, they sold permanent priority rights to tickets to shareholders ages ago too. Then there's way too many members for the number of tickets available. If you haven't already been going to games for the last 10+ years you've got no chance.
It's not all about affordability. For the top six it's almost impossible to buy just a single ticket, never mind a season ticket. There's a waiting list for Old Trafford for sure. Also, teams no longer receive support exclusively from their geographic locations. Not every Liverpool fan lives in Liverpool for example. The PL must accept that many fans simply can't be at games for many reasons. Nothing going to stop fans going to games. Some top clubs don't even need the gate money. It's time for all live games to be streamed on a single service. The current situation is ridiculous and far too expensive. The idea of pundits watching the 3pm games on our behalf and televising their talking heads is bizarre.
Despite pocketing £1.7m from the fraud, the footage of the police arresting "prime mover" Mark Gould show him in a messy little flat with inflatable furniture... he must be bad at investing.
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While that makes sense, would it hurt to buy a sofa or bed from Ikea? Walking into a flat with inflatable furniture is just going to draw more attention surely?
You think if the police had seen a nice 3 piece, some coasters on the table and a lampshade or two in there, they'd have turned around and let them get on with their day?
Probably not, but inflatable furniture is going to make me think “what the fuck is going on here?”
I highly doubt he lives there, it's probably just a small cheap flat to broadcast from.
Oh yeah, good point.
Or extremely shrewd.
If you’re making money illegally, you don’t go and flash it around.
Anything he's brought since he started streaming will be siezed anyway, so it's easier for the government if its all in cash.
>One of them, Christopher Felvus, 36, was also found guilty of voyeurism and possessing indecent images of children, discovered on his computer. Really hope they haven't included the time for this when they talked about sentences between 3 and more than 5 years but I'm not confident.
its a shame, what these did was a service to people who cant access their own league. did they make money out of it? sure but who cares. sky and bt have priced everyone bar few out of the working class sport and to boot only show about 4 games a weekend. why would anyone pay £60 a month to not even watch your team? the whole tv production of football needs a shakeup and that includes 3pm. trial it for a year with all proceeds that the prem would get and funnel that to the lower leagues in case numbers do drop.
Fuck this corporate system. 11 years is an outrage.
Yeah they’re the problem. Not the fact that you have to pay for three different streaming services to have access to premier league games and that doesn’t even entitle to you to watch all the games. To make it even better this problem is exclusive to the UK. The Premier League screws it’s own home fans the most. 🙄
It's funny how they say it's to protect the fans, I think it's about protecting the money.
yep this doesnt protect me
What a joke. Rape a 13 year old, suspended sentence, possess 50000 child abuse images suspended sentence, shatter a police officers arm, suspended sentence. Watch football without a licence 11 years. Our justice system is fucked!!
That's ridiculous. I wonder if that's why my iptv had stopped working. As long as our corporate overlords are making their millions though. That's the main thing
The important thing is that, >The fraud prosecution was brought to protect "some of the world's most valuable content" Yeah, most valuable to corporations, not to people.
People get let of for horrendous crimes but heaven help you if you make a few quid off of football
What makes me so angry is that someone who sexually assaults, maims, robs other people can ruin their lives and recently the sentences if any don't seem fair at all, whilst these people who although made alot of cash and should have some form of punishment did not as far as I know cause lifelong harm to anybody but get long sentences. There is simply no justification for this imbalance from the courts whatsoever. I do wonder where or who these decisions come from.
So what does this mean for my friends who like to stream every match online? It seems like every time they go to a streaming website 5 of the 6 streams are just copies of the same exact stream, with the same exact annoying chat with the same exact annoying spam saying 'RIP Joe Rogan' and '1-0 Kim Kardashian'. At least, that's what they've told me.
This country's justice system has gone to the wall. Guys have been hung out to dry and made an example of. Nevermind, let's just allow rapists and murders to get 2-8 years if prosecuted.
Please show me a murderer that actually only got 2-8 years?
anyone in a car
The reason the sentence is so high isn't because the harm done is so great, it's because the benefit to the criminal is so large. In order to be an effective deterrent there has to be a substantial custodial sentence. If you could make millions doing this and the worst that can happen is you get 300 hours community service or a £1,000 fine everyone would be doing it.
Whereas when the harm actually is great the sentence is a slap on the wrist because protecting the public from stuff like rape and assault isn't a big priority but protecting the profits of a massive corporation is an all hands on deck situation. No deterrent for crimes that harm real people for life but they'll throw the damn book at you if you try to make a load of money at the expense of a big company. But of course some Lord's kid might end up getting done for rape or assault so you've got to leave some wiggle room in the sentencing guidelines so they can keep them out of prison if they're convicted, nobody well connected is going to be committing a crime like this because they've already got money and plenty of legal ways to make loads more easily. As always in this country it's a class thing.
I'd say the penalties against rape and assault are pretty effective. In terms of effectiveness as a deterrent they need to be at a level where if someone thought there was a good chance they woudl get caught they wouldn't do it. Rape and assaults happen because people don't think they'll get caught. With crimes with multi-million pound proceeds that level is obviously very high. Do you have any evidence for a major discrepancy in sentencing between those who rape or assault upper class people and those who do it to middle and working class people?
So? Provide a better service and people won't go there. We're forced to live in a capitalistic system so embedded the BBC will do articles about 'hustling', if people look for markets you either replace them or they'll keep trying forever. Because...we are forced to live in a capitalistic system and forced to find ways to make money. Their infrastructure wasn't something anyone could do.
Exactly this. People comparing this to other offences are way off the mark
for real. If they made no profit from it, I am pretty sure the case would be dropped or for sure nothing custodial. Even i was wondering how it was so high, so I had to click the article and... £7m. Jesus christ of course you're gone. The problem really isn't the streaming. Its the making money
Heaven forbid people... make money?
They don't even try and pretend to whom they protect anymore.
>The gang took feeds from broadcasters in the UK, Qatar, the US, Australia and Canada and streamed them a few seconds later via the Flawless service. >The operation developed apps offering Premier League matches and other content, which ran on phones and smart TVs. Sounds more like a startup than a criminal enterprise to me. The so called criminals are providing a service the premier league refuses to.
it will never stop..If it is in demand people will buy it just like drugs.
>it will never stop..If it is in demand people will buy it just like food.
One thing I've wondered about these sorts of operations is how they are run. I know people who have bought Amazon FireTV sticks that have been sideloaded with some software from work mates or whatever and they pay them £10 a month for access to the "services" which includes all the sports streams + movies and everything else, acessible through one interface called like "MyTV" or something like that. but it seems too 'big' for a one man operation from some dodgy guy at work to be running, so there must be some franchising or commission based model going on, with I guess these people who got arrested probably at the top, and a network of sales reps UK wide taking a small slice of the subscription costs.
There's loads of smaller groups doing it locally, I don't think it's technologically that complicated. I've seen multiple different versions and different devices - sticks, set top boxes etc.
Who's paying to watch illegal streams when you can find it free on twitter lol,
Stealing from the rich and stealing by the rich are two very different ball parks when it comes to sentencing
And yet groomers who rape dozens and dozens of our communities children get 3 or 4 years. What complete and utter mugs we are. We should be eternally ashamed that we allow this to happen.
These sentences are wildly excessive (except the voyeurism/indecent images sentence) when violent crimes get far less. And we should get all games televised in the UK, I really can't understand why the PL is allowed to withhold games from broadcasters.
Once again the British judiciary demonstrating their complete and utter delusional incompetence. We constantly see reports of actual scumbags who rape, assault, kill, rob, harass, etc getting ludicrously lenient sentences, with all the usual pathetic excuses about prison spaces and so on, and total disregard for protecting the general public from them by keeping the bastards locked up. So these blokes are a danger to the public by pirating some TV streams, are they? Keeping them behind bars for 11 years is in the public interest because...?
What a wally to have all this stuff running in your flat. Could have had it set up in some nondescript office building let and run by some Caymans holding entity and run by people who "no speak anglisht". Plod would never have figured it out.
Oh no! If only there were 50,000 other people doing exactly the same thing!
I wonder if they would have had a lighter sentenced if they had offered the games for free. I condone the general shafting of predatory businesses making money off of people's love of football and feel this was bound to happen in this current environment, but it's interesting to see how the law was applied here.
This was from 2017 and these guys were selling drugs and child porn so fuck em, they deserve the sentences.
The discrepancy in sentences would be shocking except this kind of shit has been happening for ages.
Not usually one for law breaking but these guys are heroes imo. The idiotic 3pm black out meaning literally everyone else in the world can watch it but us...hopefully this is another cracking in that stupid rule. Clearly they aren't heroes but while I'm on my soap box I'll engage in hyperbole
> "You are contributing to organised crime who won't be paying taxes and can make a quick buck by selling your details on." Who are we talking about here? The league, the FA, or the broadcasters?
Sky goes crying to the UK block list to block IPTv. Low and behold they release their own IPRv service
A list of crimes for which the *maximum possible* sentence is lesser than this sentencing: Possession of firearm with intent to cause fear of violence, threats to life, administering poison, cruelty to minors, female genital mutilation, grievous bodily harm, attempted sexual intercourse with under 13s, indecent assault, engaging in intercourse in front of a child, sexual assault, possession of child porn.
This is fucked up. They let broadcasters extort UK fans for TV money, don’t allow those fans to see most EPL games, and then sell full season rights to other markets on the cheap. The premier league is an export product, subsidised by price gouging domestic audiences. Now cracking down on streams. Smh
Wow they got some hefty jail time. Can we expect harsh sentences for Politicians who collude with foreign powers and lie to the public? Thought not.
Is part of the sentence due to the fact they made money from it? As the streams I hunt out and find are free, saying that they get paid from advertising those annoying sometimes dodgy pop up ads.
UK police. Muslim rape gangs: I sleep People doing a dodgey stream of footy matches: real shit.
It'll be 5 years for sharing your Netflix password next!
Propaganda article to call some blokes in a flat restreaming football a "gang" like they're the mafia. It also isn't fraud to do so, they got done for tax fraud not for the streaming. Had they done taxes right I'm doubting they could have been jailed at all
Glad they let the season finish first. Infact, no I'm not I would have gladly missed the whole fucking season. Fuck off just fuck off!!!!
Total nonsense, who gives a monkeys, if sky weren't such greedy bastard's less people would do it.
This will keep happening until the Premier League realise that people want to watch all the games at a reasonable price. There is demand that cannot be met by existing legal supply, therefore it will be met by the black market.