Red card for illegal web footie viewers

Programming from live events is being taken from satellite feeds and streamed to anyone on the internet

The UK's Premier League is tracking a number of websites offering illegal streaming of live football, and intends to take legal action against the ISPs hosting the sites.

The organisation claims to have been tracking the sites for six months, and has hired the services of web monitoring firm Netresults to monitor the activity.

Situated mostly in China and the Far East, the sites are charging web users for live matches, or offering the matches for free, all without official approval.

The Premier League is now calling for group action by sports rights holders to stamp out the activity, and has held talks with the ruling bodies in tennis, Formula One, cricket and rugby in a bid to form an anti-piracy alliance.

"We are also waiting to see what happens in a pending legal action between UEFA and an overseas ISP," said Premier League spokesman Dan Johnston.

"Hopefully that will create a precedent and our lawyers are confident that we will be able to take similar action against ISPs that allow this kind of thing to take place."

The problems are similar to those being experienced by the music industry with illegal downloads. In the Premier League's case, programming from live events is being taken from satellite feeds and streamed to anyone on the internet.

"Currently the quality is not that good but, as more people get broadband and the technology improves, it is potentially a great threat to our intellectual property rights," said Johnston.