Viewing Illegal Streams: No Cautions, Fines or Arrests Say GM Police

https://torrentfreak.com/viewing-illegal-streams-no-cautions-fines-or-arrests-say-gm-police-240129/

by CTOSian • 2 years ago

104 106 2 years ago

throwup238• 2 years ago

The UK police is so massively underfunded since austerity started in 2010 that it's no surprise there's been zero arrests for viewing illegal streams. They just don't have the manpower to enforce something so prevalent and hard to police.

The bigger surprise is that they have enough manpower to fill the freedom of information request to begin with. That's probably the reason the other two departments refused to answer.

BLKNSLVR2• 2 years ago

I thought the second half of the article basically disposed of the notion that lack of resources was the reason for refusing to answer.

West Yorkshire Police received the same request (pdf) and was able to confirm that the words ‘UFO’, ‘UAP’, ‘ALIEN’ or ‘SPACESHIP’ appeared in log text 1805 times.

cornholio• 2 years ago

no surprise there's been zero arrests for viewing illegal streams.

I can only fathom "viewing illegal streams" leading to arrest in the case of CSAM. Regardless of any staffing or resources, it's a complete travesty to arrest anyone for using their internet connection to view lawfully produced content.

The power to restrain the physical liberty is a substantial corollary of the state's monopoly on violence, which should be employed when those arrested are a menace to other peaceful citizens.

I could see law enforcement getting involved in copyright crimes committed by commercial pirates, issuing fines to consumers or identifying them to the rights holders who can then seek redress in a court of law.

duxup• 2 years ago

Yeah if it is tied to a larger / other crime I could see it happening if only because they're really looking into another issue.

ta12432• 2 years ago

There are companies selling boxes which stream massive amounts of material they don't have the rights to, for very large profits.

Some teenager watching the latest game of thrones (or whatever's hip nowadays) because their parent doesn't subscribe to Sky, or because they were out when it was on, isn't really the same thing.

1273613• 2 years ago

Nobody should ever be prosecuted for viewing or reading anything, anywhere. Doing so is a hallmark of a de-facto police state. It's a fundamental liberty we have forgotten about as the frog has slowly boiled over the last 40 years.

crote4• 2 years ago

The UK police is so massively underfunded

Is it, though? According to the government itself, funding has increased from 12B in 2015 to 17B in 2023[0]. In real terms, the UK police now has more funding than it had pre-austerity (16.5B in 2023 money).

If they don't have the manpower, it isn't due to a lack of money.

[0] https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/police-funding-for-...

wulfeet• 2 years ago

2015 is not pre-austerity.

doublerabbit3• 2 years ago

Is it, though?

It is.

Police cuts here in Scotland are dire. If your house gets broken in to they won't even visit.

Squatting is on the uprise including violent behaviour.

The list is too long to even mention.

https://spf.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/police-budget-...

walthamstow• 2 years ago

Conservatives laid off 20k experienced officers 2010-2017 then hired 20k inexperienced ones 2019-2023.

https://www.channel4.com/news/factcheck/factcheck-are-the-co...

During this period the UK population has grown considerably, comparing officers or £ spent per capita is probably more appropriate.

switch007• 2 years ago

2015 is a curious date to use.

It just happens to be when about 7 years of funding cuts ended.

Funding in 2009 was £19.3bn, which is £32bn adjusted for inflation to today.

22/23 funding was £24bn (£27bn inflation adjusted)

jdietrich• 2 years ago

Three key issues that I'd raise:

When austerity kicked in, most forces offered redundancy to long-serving officers on good contracts. At the depths of the austerity era, the police practically gave up on investigation - outside of CID and other specialist department, the sheer volume of work forced the police into a purely reactive posture, dealing only with the most urgent and visible problems in the quickest way possible. When funding started to pick back up, they brought new and inexperienced staff into a dysfunctional service. The number of officers isn't down that much compared to pre-austerity levels, but huge amounts of institutional learning was lost.

A lack of resourcing and policy failures in the mental health system meant that the police - the public service of last resort - had to pick up the slack. It's now quite normal for officers to spend a substantial proportion of their time dealing with mental health calls that fundamentally aren't a police matter, or to spend an entire shift waiting to hand over an s.135/s.136 patient to a place of safety.

A lack of funding in the Courts Service and the Criminal Prosecution Service has created a huge bottleneck in the criminal justice pipeline. Cases are taking years to get to court, hearings are being repeatedly re-scheduled and the CPS have tacitly set a much higher bar on the quality of case they're willing to prosecute, all of which has an obvious impact on police resources, recidivism and the wellbeing of victims.

Dysfunction in British policing is part of a much broader dysfunction of the British state as a whole. There's a consistent story across the whole of the public sector - under-resourced services are dealing with an increasingly complex and demanding workload, because vulnerable people are being failed by multiple parts of the state simultaneously. Teachers rarely see students who are [i]just[/i] struggling in school; those kids invariably have home lives that are marred with multiple socioeconomic problems. Doctors spend most of their time treating people who aren't [i]just[/i] ill, but who are also poor and lonely and living in inadequate housing. If you'll forgive the double entendre, it's a death by a thousand cuts - services that don't have the resources to cope with their own workload are having to pick up the pieces for other services, creating a vicious circle of rising demand.

ranger_danger• 2 years ago

why would the police be involved in the first place? how is this not a civil issue for the courts to decide? certainly that would be the case in the US.

gadders4• 2 years ago

They don't even turn up for burglaries, so I don't think someone is going to get their collar felt for watching a dodgy stream of Strickland/DuPlessis on their laptop.

graemep2• 2 years ago

Depends - the people lobbying for copyright law enforcement are rather more influential than the average person who gets burgled.

Then there is PICPU and presumably other specialist units that do nothing else.

LudwigNagasena2• 2 years ago

The UK police is busy hunting people for their tweets.

wait_a_minute2• 2 years ago

Illegal…streams? Why does the UK have police monitoring what streams people watch? That’s not good. UK wants thought police?

dijksterhuis3• 2 years ago

That’s kind of the point of the article… they aren’t.

Dig1t• 2 years ago

I think what OP is saying is that it’s a bit crazy they’re asking the question in the first place. What is an “illegal stream” and why are we even talking about it in the first place? This shouldn’t even be something the police have control over at all.

BLKNSLVR2• 2 years ago

Yes, the UK wants thought police. They're slightly ahead of the other Western nations.

lupusreal• 2 years ago

Apparently some UK police even think that "this isn't Communist China" is hate speech, an illegal utterance. They're wrong of course, but that won't stop them from trying to make trouble for you.

tiahura• 2 years ago

Oi m8, you got a loicence for that?

dijksterhuis3• 2 years ago

Now then, now then, what are we watchin’ ‘ere then?

monkeynotes4• 2 years ago

In many countries the police address complaints of illegal streaming from copyright holders reporting individual IP addresses accessing torrents they are sitting on. Why on earth would the UK have a policy that the Police's time could be spent actively detecting that activity. Like how is that ever a priority?

I am glad I left the UK long ago. When I go back I see cameras literally everywhere. Going on the motorway is insane, indeed any given road is peppered with speed cameras, but the motorway has taken it to the max.

It's well known that an individual can be tracked pretty much across the country on various CCTV. While this is great for crime detection it does have a social morale cost that is not considered as they quietly descend unimpeded into 1984.

Anyone see the debacle of the piano player being gaslit by a police officer dealing with Chinese people complaining he was filming them in public?

Erratic65763• 2 years ago

They have police monitoring private Snapchat conversations

monkeynotes4• 2 years ago

I think many governments do this for reasons other than piracy. Human trafficking, child abuse, and a myriad of scams, hate groups, etc.

crote4• 2 years ago

They probably aren't actively monitoring it. However, if they bust a provider of illegal streams, they can just take their access logs and/or payment information to identify watchers.

mattlondon• 2 years ago

Often it is illegal streams in pubs etc that are "monitored" (I.e. someone from a rights holder goes in and checks the watermarks on the screen). So not someone in their house, but a pub or bar streaming something that people want to watch without paying the normal fees.

monkeynotes4• 2 years ago

Seriously? Do they do the same for places playing music? I thought the copyright holders pursued these offences, I just can't imagine a cop doing a patrol popping into pubs and bars and checking for streaming.

gadders4• 2 years ago

They are already the thought police. Try standing silently praying (not that anyone could tell from looking at you) near an abortion clinic.

Ekaros• 2 years ago

Not surprising. Actually even speculating any damages for just viewing would likely be waste of time. Even if you could claim legal costs, the non claimable costs of overseeing such case would be substantially more than any penalties.

tantalor2• 2 years ago

Those damages might even be zero, since the events are broadcast freely, the retail value is $0.

TheAceOfHearts2• 2 years ago

It's not surprising that so many people are pirating sports streams. My understanding is that many sports require paying multiple different parties just to watch all of a team's games. Maybe the service providers are too greedy.

The mention of UFOs is amusing. I'll admit that every time I hear about some UFO related story part of me really wishes it was real, just because it would be exciting to interact with aliens in our lifetime. Sadly it seems like UFO claims are usually hoaxes of some kind. Can you imagine actually having a UFO encounter and later having nobody else believe you? That would be quite devastating, I would imagine.

itsoktocry• 2 years ago

Maybe the service providers are too greedy.

You have the issue correct, but not the cause. Greed? The rights to the sports are owned by different entities, sometimes locally. Should they just hand that over to Netflix or something? I feel like if they own the product, they should benefit from the media distribution.

oh_sigh• 2 years ago

They could get together, form and fund a new company that provided unified access to all games/teams, and then distribute revenue fairly to themselves from that. IIRC that is what the MLB did with BAMTech that was acquired by Disney at a valuation of $5B

TheAceOfHearts2• 2 years ago

I don't know enough about the subject but I'm happy to learn! Right now it seems they're not benefitting at all, since a significant number of people are just pirating their content.

It seems like ideally you'd have a bunch of rights owners organize to create a single distributor that caters to viewer's desires. Maybe provide a seasonal pass to watch every game of your favorite team regardless of where they're playing? My understanding is that some sports require you to buy subscriptions with multiple different services if you want to follow your favorite team. This is obviously regarded as more favorable by the rights holder since they think they'll be able to get more money if people subscribe to their service rather than partnering with a different organization.

I don't know if this is applicable to the domain of sports, but in other industries sometimes there are local distributors which were relevant in the era of PPV or TV, but which have largely become obsolete in the modern era. Usually these entities become middle-men that just happened to keep owning the rights to media distribution, but which no longer do anything to provide value.

Cody-99• 2 years ago

Should they just hand that over to Netflix or something?

Not necessarily netflix but you should be able to watch all games of a given team and league on a single site/service. Something like a league wide streaming site isn't impossible. You shouldn't have to subscribe to 5 different providers to watch all of you teams games.

The rights to the sports are owned by different entities, sometimes locally. Should

Sure but that doesn't mean the game can't be shown locally AND on a streaming site that carries all the leagues games.

LudwigNagasena2• 2 years ago

Even the music industry managed to solve this problem.

vehemenz• 2 years ago

Even if you pay for all the services, it can be annoying to find where the game is, assuming it's not blacked out.

The pirate streams are great because you can just click on the game you want and watch it. You don't have to flip between three channels, wait for commercials, wait for other games to end, etc.

paxys4• 2 years ago

Here's what you need to do at minimum to watch NBA games in the US:

- Buy a cable package and make sure it has both ESPN and TNT (different providers will include them in different subscription tiers, so you have to check).

- ESPN and TNT will each only broadcast a select number of primetime games, so for the rest you need NBA league pass. This may be offered as an add-on by your cable provider, or you may need to buy it directly from the NBA's own site (and use a separate app for those games).

- However your local or regional teams' games won't be available on League Pass, so you have to figure out which company has bought local rights for that particular team (e.g. Bally Sports for Knicks games in the NY area) and pay for that channel as well.

- Sometimes that regional network and your cable provider will be unable to strike a deal. If that happens - too bad, you literally cannot watch home games of your local team legally.

The situation in the NFL is even worse.

So yeah, it's no surprise that a large number of fans who would otherwise have paid for games choose to just stream them illegally with one click.

wombat-man2• 2 years ago

The NFL is at least merciful to fans of local market teams. If you live close enough to where your favorite team is based, you can watch most games for free, over the air, or with a basic TV subscription. It's unfortunate for the NBA or MLB fans that they need to figure out what local cable channel has the rights to their team.

The real pain is if you're a fan of an out of market NFL team, in which case...

- Cable with ESPN for MNF (if your local team is playing, this should be free on ABC) - Prime for TNF (iirc the local market gets this on fox??) - NFL Sunday ticket

I think the only exceptions this year were the two games exclusive to peacock, and the London games. I don't know if they show the London game for free to the local market.

bluGill4• 2 years ago

The speed of light compared to the size of the universe means that even if there is life out there they will not find out about use before we are gone. Even if they are going to all solar systems odds are against them finding us. Not to mention there is no reason to think they would survive a trip to us.

fortyseven• 2 years ago

Says, so confidently, the member of a species who hasn't yet discovered a form of FTL travel.

The general assumption is that any visitor from outside the solar system has found a unique solution to this enormous problem beyond our current level of understanding.

elashri• 2 years ago

The problem is not the current size of the universe is big, it is that it is expanding with time. Aliens will still have to contend with the same physics laws because they are universal (in the tight meaning of universal here). We can actually model the recession velocity of emitted photon from a source (will be higher that speed of light) depending on our universe model.

To have aliens that are near enough so that they made contact with us ( through some signal not by abduction of humans) would mean they they very close on cosmological scale that they must be living within our detection capabilites. And with all our searches for life so far nearby we couldn't see a signal for unique civilization signature.

tmnvix• 2 years ago

Is it possible that quantum entanglement could play a role here? Is travel actually necessary for information transfer? Obviously I know little to nothing about such things.

cykros• 2 years ago

The leagues and/or teams are too greedy is more like it. You used to be able to watch sports on broadcast (antenna) TV, for free. Then cable channels started bidding up sports contracts, to motivate subscriptions. Then, more recently, streaming services have gotten in on the game. To try to cater to all of them, the leagues (and teams, depending on the sport) have decided to slice and dice the rights, so that some games end up on one platform, and others on another.

Not for nothing, but at some point this has to stop. My suspicion is that the leagues will launch their own streaming platforms, and allow people to buy either subscriptions to their team, or to the full season, perhaps with postseason packages as well. It's what likely SHOULD happen if you want to avoid alienating the fanbases, though in my experience, sports fans seem to be very much in the "thank you mistress, may I have another?" camp.

The idea of being expected to subscribe to 4+ services just to watch all of your team's games is absurd, especially when they're services that you're otherwise not interested in. Of course people are pirating things.

LAC-Tech4• 2 years ago

Magnanimous of them. Here's what you can get arrested for though:

UK police launched an inquiry over offensive memes in a whatsapp chat. A man was later jailed for it:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2022/jun/14/ex-police-of...

UK police arrest a man over offensive tweet. 150 hours community service followed:

https://www.theverge.com/2022/3/31/23004339/uk-twitter-user-...

UK police raiding a pub for displaying offensive dolls:

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/golliwog-dolls-g...

breakingcups• 2 years ago

Don't forget "Police have seized my wife's laptop after one of her friends discovered and reported my wife's modded version of Skyrim."

https://old.reddit.com/r/LegalAdviceUK/comments/1974t9g/poli...

Decency laws are a joke.

notfed2• 2 years ago

Seems law wasn't involved there, yet.

BriggyDwiggs422• 2 years ago

How are they simultaneously doing that bs while at the same time being more anti-trans than other western countries. Brits are so odd.

em-bee• 2 years ago

i don't see the contradiction

intunderflow• 2 years ago

It's not generally about left-wing and right-wing, it's more that the UK is an authoritarian state, with relatively very few civil liberties compared to other western countries.

To give an example, when the government becomes upset with protests they just make them illegal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Police,_Crime,_Sentencing_and_...

and if people in the UK strike too much, they just make that illegal too: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strikes_(Minimum_Service_Level...

stetrain2• 2 years ago

Probably worth noting that the first was while serving as a police officer in a chat with colleagues.

James Watts was serving with West Mercia police in 2020 when he shared the “grossly offensive” material in a group chat, which included former colleagues at a Warwickshire prison.

LAC-Tech4• 2 years ago

I'm sure similar arrests in the Russian Federation also have caveats that are "worth noting".

But in the grand scheme of things, how noteworthy are they?

averageRoyalty• 2 years ago

Although the female police officer who did an identical thing was found not guilty after the prosecution "forgot" to follow it up:

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11138385/Female-pol...

btdmaster• 2 years ago

Do you know any of the original Twitter accounts? I'm curious if any of them were pseudonymous in any way

paxys4• 2 years ago

It's absolutely wild to me that there is a law on the books that says you can get imprisoned for up to 10 years for watching a stream of a sporting event or TV show on your laptop. Even with the strictest interpretation of the legal framework how is it not just a civil matter between the viewer and the rights holder? Trick question because I know the answer is "large corporations lobbied for it", but still sad..

tantalor2• 2 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criminal_copyright_law_in_the_...

asystole• 2 years ago

TFA is about the UK.

pjot• 2 years ago

10 year old me was terrified of the FBI warning message at the beginning of every VHS tape.

graemep2• 2 years ago

Have you seen the IT Crowd version:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ALZZx1xmAzg

cynicalsecurity• 2 years ago

That's surprisingly good news.

kristianp• 2 years ago

Another reason why all of our police forces should be genetically modifed.

Viewing Illegal Streams: No Cautions, Fines or Arrests Say GM Police

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