£180k – the amount of fines Sky produced in 2014 for illegally broadcasting Premier League football games through unauthorised / foreign feeds.
The largest penalty to date, literally weeks ago, saw a Glasgow pub ordered to pay £70,000 in damages – The Avalon Bar is now closed! – can you afford to be complacent?
Sky is able to enforce such fines through the copyright law, i.e. showing the Premier League logo and anthem. Until recently, Sky found themselves embroiled in law suits when patrons argued their case to screen matches through alternative platforms. But following the decision to use copyright issues as the main method of prosecution, the broadcaster now has the upper hand, as a large number of prosecutions by the Federation against Copyright Theft (FACT) have been successfully undertaken.
The Stats
7,000: Pubs visited by Sky as part of the Premier Leagues investigations programme
894: Pubs that have provided legally binding documents not to show unauthorised foreign broadcasts
180: Pubs that have had action commenced against them by the Premier League for showing unauthorised foreign broadcasts
60: Pubs that were using masking technology to block Sky copyright protected material – they still took action
30: of those pubs chose to ignore warning letters so full court action was launched against them
Sky have invested billions of pounds in high-quality entertainment, they are doing all they can, alongside the Government, the media and technology industries, to help protect their copyright. Such protection makes sure that consumers continue to benefit both now and in the future. This means taking effective action against online piracy and copyright infringement.
To date Sky has received court orders to block the following websites that were found to have breached copyright laws:
- Viooz
- Megashare
- Watch32
- Zmovie
- Solarmovie
- Tube+
- Primewire
- Vodly
- Watchfreemovies
- Project-Free TV
- Yify-Torrents
- 1337x
- Bitsnoop
- Extratorrent
- Monova
- Torrentcrazy
- Torrentdownloads
- Torrenthound
- Torrentreactor
- Torrentz
- Ambp3
- Beemp3
- Bomb-mp3
- Eemp3world
- Filecrop
- Filestube
- Mp3juices
- Mp3lemon
- Mp3raid
- Mp3skull
- Newalbumreleases
- Rapidlibrary
- EZTV
- First Row Sports
- Download4all
- Movie2K
- Kick Ass Torrents (KAT)
- Fenopy
- H33T
- The Pirate Bay