UK Sports Authorities Crack Down on P2P TV

posted by soulxtc in file sharing // 733 days 21 hours 50 minutes ago

It seems P2P TV has become popular enough for some people to begin policing the distribution of their streams illegally

Sports authorities in the UK have hired a company called NetResult to seek out and police the interent for unauthorized streaming of their matches.

The FA Premier League, Uefa, Cricket Australia and other sport bodies are afraid that P2P streaming could harm stadium attendance of their games. Some matches, like those by Premiership, are not shown on TV in the UK for fear that stadium attendances could suffer and so P2P TV undermines their efforts to do so.

The P2P streaming is done mainly by Chinese sport channels, and can be watched anywhere in the world using applications like the TVUPlayer.

In addition to soccer, some sites are also claiming to offer live cricket action from The Ashes in Australia. Now who and how many people watch Cricket in the first place is beyond me but, apparently the demand is high enough to merit streaming these events in the first place.

Premiership matches are not yet legally available for streaming anywhere in the world but, starting next season, Sky and Setanta Sports, who own the rights to show Premiershipmatches on TV in the UK until 2010, will also be able to broadcast them legally on the internet.

NetResult claims to have had some "results," pun intended, and "good success" in stopping broadcasts from some of the Chinese sources but, it is an "ongoing challenge."

"We're gradually working the numbers down and down, so unfortunately it's a bit of a lengthy process," says NetResults Tim Cooper. Imagine that. Difficult and lengthy process in acountry that's home to more than 1.6 billion people and the world capital of piracy? Hmm, he sure hehas his work cut out for him.

He furthers:

You could shut a website down today but tomorrow another 10 will appear.

We're fighting a continual battle because people will always try and jump on and off certain services and new technology is always evolving.

His comments sound as if they were lifted from the confidential e-mails that have been circulating in the offices of the RIAA for more than a decade now. He should tell his employers to take a page from Hollywood's playbook and embrace P2P technology quickly and efficiently. Why wait till next season to stream the matches if you can already do so now? Why waste all the money going after each and every site only to have others reappear the very next day?