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.
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