The new war on internet piracy: illegal streams & Kodi boxes have reignited the fight

[bsaambl]

In 2015, Sky and BT paid a record £5.1bn for the rights to screen Premier League football matches over three seasons, a sum that amounts to £10m per game. Earlier this year, BT renewed its exclusive rights to Champions League games in a £1.2bn deal, a hefty 32pc increase on the previous bill. The sums paid suggest surging demand for live football on television, but viewing figures paint a different picture. 

Legitimate audiences for Premier League football fell by 12pc on average last season, according to figures from the Broadcasters Audience Research Board. In the Champions League, some matches fared even worse. The decline has seemingly correlated with a surge in interest for Kodi boxes, many of which easily allow pirated streams to be found for free.

According to BT, internet searches for “Kodi Box” increased by 143pc in the 12 months to November 2016. “The major problem is this change in technology, which has enabled someone to plug an internet TV box in to their broadband and television,” says Kieron O’Connor, the director general of FACT, the industry body for copyright protection. “It’s superseded the old ways, it’s exploded and it’s causing the rights holders problems because of the ease of use.” 

There is one major difficulty with tackling Kodi boxes: they are not, in themselves, illegal. The software that runs on the television boxes was originally created as a way for owners of the Xbox games console to play their video files, and is an open system on which anything can be loaded, similar to a web browser. It is not until users install separate applications on top of it that they can access illegal material.


The software is maintained by the XBMC Foundation, an American non-profit consortium run by volunteers. Nate Betzen, its president, helps run it in between freelance jobs from his base in Kansas. He says the foundation has “no particular stand on piracy itself” but is no fan of the apps that enable it, which are often clogged with viruses and “cause a great deal of problems for people who try to use them”. 

He says Kodi’s developers celebrate whenever illegal add-ons are taken offline but that the software’s open-source nature, which means its code is freely available online, make it difficult to ban them. “We’re sympathetic to [rights holders] but if we were to go out and lock the software, someone would just fork [copy] it,” he says.

A glut of cheaply imported Chinese Kodi boxes, pre-installed with apps that allow illegal access to Premier League games, pirated television shows and unlimited music, has seen their use skyrocket. Mr Betzen says the number of Kodi users has increased from around 7m two years ago to 30m today. 

According to figures from the Industry Trust, an organisation to promote legal options, nearly two thirds of people who use illegal internet television boxes use it for live sport. Illegal streamers are also less likely to have a moral objection to it, with 31pc seeing it as legitimate compared to 8pc for downloads.

Authorities also find it harder to track streaming, since it involves real-time broadcasts that are often shut down shortly after an event. Nonetheless, broadcasters are now waging a war against illegal streaming. They have convinced Amazon, eBay and Facebook to stop selling Kodi boxes featuring illegal add-ons, an act that has been declared illegal by the European Court of Justice. 

New powers granted to broadcasters by the High Court in March allow rights holders to force internet providers to block access to illegal streams instantly, a process helped by the fact that BT and Sky are both the dominant football broadcasters and major internet providers.

Advertisers such as gambling websites have also been pressured to blacklist illegal streaming websites, cutting off their primary source of income, while several of the biggest online sources of unofficial Kodi apps have been shut down following lawsuits in the US. 

This year, the IPO opened a call for views on how it should respond to the rise in illegal streaming over internet television boxes.

FACT says it wants the law tightened to make it easier to punish suppliers of such devices, and the IPO will respond later this year. Industry sources say companies have learned their lesson from a backlash that greeted them when single mothers were served with bills of hundreds of thousands of dollars for illegal downloads.

“It’s much more effective to stop the supply,” says Mr O’Connor. “These are film fans, TV fans, football fans, we would much rather turn them into customers.” 

The music industry succeeded in doing this by embracing streaming, which offered value and convenience with on-demand access. In the football world, where prices have exploded and many games are not on television, this may prove more difficult.

In 2015, Sky and BT paid a record £5.1bn for the rights to screen Premier League football matches over three seasons, a sum that amounts to £10m per game. Earlier this year, BT renewed its exclusive rights to Champions League games in a £1.2bn deal, a hefty 32pc increase on the previous bill. The sums paid suggest surging demand for live football on television, but viewing figures paint a different picture. 

Legitimate audiences for Premier League football fell by 12pc on average last season, according to figures from the Broadcasters Audience Research Board. In the Champions League, some matches fared even worse. The decline has seemingly correlated with a surge in interest for Kodi boxes, many of which easily allow pirated streams to be found for free.

According to BT, internet searches for “Kodi Box” increased by 143pc in the 12 months to November 2016. “The major problem is this change in technology, which has enabled someone to plug an internet TV box in to their broadband and television,” says Kieron O’Connor, the director general of FACT, the industry body for copyright protection. “It’s superseded the old ways, it’s exploded and it’s causing the rights holders problems because of the ease of use.” 

There is one major difficulty with tackling Kodi boxes: they are not, in themselves, illegal. The software that runs on the television boxes was originally created as a way for owners of the Xbox games console to play their video files, and is an open system on which anything can be loaded, similar to a web browser. It is not until users install separate applications on top of it that they can access illegal material.

 

The software is maintained by the XBMC Foundation, an American non-profit consortium run by volunteers. Nate Betzen, its president, helps run it in between freelance jobs from his base in Kansas. He says the foundation has “no particular stand on piracy itself” but is no fan of the apps that enable it, which are often clogged with viruses and “cause a great deal of problems for people who try to use them”. 

He says Kodi’s developers celebrate whenever illegal add-ons are taken offline but that the software’s open-source nature, which means its code is freely available online, make it difficult to ban them. “We’re sympathetic to [rights holders] but if we were to go out and lock the software, someone would just fork [copy] it,” he says.

A glut of cheaply imported Chinese Kodi boxes, pre-installed with apps that allow illegal access to Premier League games, pirated television shows and unlimited music, has seen their use skyrocket. Mr Betzen says the number of Kodi users has increased from around 7m two years ago to 30m today. 

According to figures from the Industry Trust, an organisation to promote legal options, nearly two thirds of people who use illegal internet television boxes use it for live sport. Illegal streamers are also less likely to have a moral objection to it, with 31pc seeing it as legitimate compared to 8pc for downloads.

Authorities also find it harder to track streaming, since it involves real-time broadcasts that are often shut down shortly after an event. Nonetheless, broadcasters are now waging a war against illegal streaming. They have convinced Amazon, eBay and Facebook to stop selling Kodi boxes featuring illegal add-ons, an act that has been declared illegal by the European Court of Justice. 

New powers granted to broadcasters by the High Court in March allow rights holders to force internet providers to block access to illegal streams instantly, a process helped by the fact that BT and Sky are both the dominant football broadcasters and major internet providers.

Advertisers such as gambling websites have also been pressured to blacklist illegal streaming websites, cutting off their primary source of income, while several of the biggest online sources of unofficial Kodi apps have been shut down following lawsuits in the US. 

This year, the IPO opened a call for views on how it should respond to the rise in illegal streaming over internet television boxes.

FACT says it wants the law tightened to make it easier to punish suppliers of such devices, and the IPO will respond later this year. Industry sources say companies have learned their lesson from a backlash that greeted them when single mothers were served with bills of hundreds of thousands of dollars for illegal downloads.

“It’s much more effective to stop the supply,” says Mr O’Connor. “These are film fans, TV fans, football fans, we would much rather turn them into customers.” 

The music industry succeeded in doing this by embracing streaming, which offered value and convenience with on-demand access. In the football world, where prices have exploded and many games are not on television, this may prove more difficult.