Posts by Prophet

The Austrian branch of T-Mobile is refusing to block access to The Pirate Bay and several other popular torrent sites. T-Mobile was asked to do so by a local music rights group, who want the ISP to voluntarily follow a court order that was issued against rival Internet provider A1.

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As the poster-child of online piracy, The Pirate Bay has become one of the most censored websites on the Internet in recent years.

Most recently the Austrian Internet provider A1 was ordered by the Commercial Court of Vienna to block subscriber access to The Pirate Bay.

In addition to various domain names of the notorious torrent site, the court order also requires the Internet provider to block three other “structurally infringing” sites; Isohunt.to, 1337x.to and h33t.to.

Taking advantage of this momentum, local music rights group LSG sent its lawyers after several other large ISPs urging them to follow suit, or else.

A letter with a ‘demand’ to block The Pirate Bay and others was sent T-Mobile and Drei, among others. However, without a court order directed at them the providers are not all eager to comply.

Helmut Spudich, spokesman for T-Mobile, says that his company has no plans to implement new blocking measures. “We will not to comply with this request and access to The Pirate Bay will not be blocked,” Spudich told Futurezone.

The decision of the Commercial Court of Vienna only applies to A1, so T-Mobile sees no legal obligation to comply with the request.

Instead, T-Mobile notes that the authorities “should implement clear legal regulations with regard to Internet blocking in Austria.”

“We don’t want to block our customers to be blocked inadvertently and would like a clarification on the correct procedure,” Spudich adds.

Several other Austrian Internet providers have received the same letter but thus far none have publicly stated that they are prepared to voluntarily block The Pirate Bay on their network.

The Pirate Bay is not the first site to be targeted in Austria. Earlier this year the Supreme Court ordered several leading Austrian ISPs to block the major streaming sites Movie4K.to and Kinox.to.

This order also clarified that the Internet providers will have to pay the costs for future blockades, which may make ISPs more hesitant to comply without protest.

Whether copyright holders will indeed take T-Mobile and other ISPs to court to broaden the existing blockade has yet to be seen.

A man from Northern Ireland has been accused of being part of an operation which could have defrauded the film industry out of £120m. Paul Mahoney, 30, who has pleaded guilty, allegedly made £300,000 from advertising revenue on several sites, including the now-defunct streaming portal FastPassTV.

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In May 2011, police in Northern Ireland reported seizing £83,000 and computer equipment following a raid in Londonderry. The operation was the culmination of an investigation carried out by the Hollywood-funded anti-piracy group Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT).

In February 2015, Paul Mahoney from Carnhill, Londonderry, was charged with offenses connected with operating now-defunct streaming links site FastPassTV and discussion and linking forum BedroomMedia. He pleaded not guilty to all charges and was bailed to appear at a later date.

In June, 30-year-old Mahoney changed direction, pleading guilty to all four charges against him including allowing the public to view copyrighted movies without rightsholder permission, conspiracy, and generating hundreds of thousands in illegal advertising revenue.

Mahoney was up in court again yesterday for a pre-sentence hearing and its becoming increasingly clear how much trouble he’s in.

After operating various sites for around six years, the prosecution claims that Mahoney made almost 410,000 euros ($471,500) from his endeavors, while simultaneously claiming state benefits worth around 12,000 euros ($13,800). When his house was raided, police found almost £82,400 ($129,000) in cash hidden away.

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During the hearing in Derry’s crown court, prosecutor David Groome QC laid out the alleged scale of the 30-year-old’s offending while describing the financial implications as “staggering”.

Taking a single six-month period during which visitors to Mahoney’s sites viewed movies 1.1 million times illegally, Groome took the figures and ran with them, painting a somewhat scary picture for the court.

“During the six-year life of defendant’s business that equates to something like movies being viewed on 12 million occasions. If you consider it is about £10 to go to the cinema or about £10 to buy a brand new DVD upon its release, it means the defendant’s websites enabled users of it to view about £120 million [$188m] worth of property,” Groome said.

While acknowledging that not every view would represent a lost sale, the prosecution noted that Mahoney had taken a number of actions since 2007 to avoid having his sites closed down. Cease and desist notices issued by FACT appear to have been ignored and police arrested him twice, yet still he continued with his operations.

Defending Mahoney, Martin Rodgers QC said his client’s partial blindness meant that he was bullied at school, events that led to him becoming a virtual bedroom recluse for around 10 years.

“His constant and only companion during that period of time was in fact his computer. In one sense, he essentially lived in a bubble for a period of time,” Rodgers said.

Interestingly, the defense addressed the prosecution’s claims that Mahoney generated large revenues from advertising companies by questioning why they weren’t being prosecuted too.

“They entered into agreements that if anyone visited the site they would pay, even though from a cursory view of the site it would be apparent this was facilitating criminal offenses,” Rodgers said.

But despite the claims of massive profits, Mahoney’s lawyer rejected the notion that his client had enjoyed the high-life.

“There were no Rolex watches, no Ferraris outside and no evidence of an extravagant lifestyle. This enterprise took on a life of its own and became far more successful than this defendant ever envisaged,” he said.

While Mahoney faces a potential custodial sentence next month, FACT says that there will be no claim for compensation. Instead, they hope that the prosecution alone will send a clear message to others considering a similar path.

Data obtained through a Freedom of Information request reveals that City of London Police have targeted the ad revenue of 251 suspected pirate sites, replacing their banners with anti-piracy messaging. The police won't reveal the domain names as that would raise their profiles, but the most prominent pirate sites are believed to be included.

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Over the past two years City of London Police’s PIPCU unit has been working with the music and movie industries to target sites that provide unauthorized access to copyrighted content.

Under the banner “Operation Creative”, last year they struck a deal with online advertising companies with the goal of replacing ads on suspected pirate sites with police banners.

The banners in question inform users that “illegal downloading is a crime” and stress the site they’re browsing has been reported to the authorities.

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The campaign has been active for more than a year but PIPCU only selectively releases information about its scope. However, thanks to a recent Freedom of Information (FOI) request we now know how many sites are on the “Infringement Watch List.”

PIPCU informs TF that 151 domain names are being targeted by the advertisement replacement effort. These domains have been reported to the police by copyright holder groups, which is also the case for PIPCU’s other anti-piracy initiatives.

Last year we sent a similar FOI request and at the time 74 sites were included, meaning that the number being targeted has doubled over the past year. Unfortunately, the police are not willing to share the actual domain names as this may increase the number of visitors to these sites.

“This is an ongoing investigation and disclosure to the public domain would raise the profile of those sites unlawfully providing copyright material. This would enable individuals to visit the sites highlighted and unlawfully download copyright material and increase the scale of the loss,” we were told.

PIPCU further informed us that 134 advertising agencies are participating in the program, up from 84 last year. All of these companies have a UK presence but many operate internationally.

It remains unclear what percentage of the total ads on pirate sites are being replaced. The banners appear rarely in the wild so we assume that the volume is relatively low.

A few weeks ago PIPCU released some statistics on the effectiveness of the campaign. Based on a small sample they concluded that the UK’s top ad spending companies decreased their ‘pirate’ advertising by 73%.

Whether this made any serious impact on the overall revenue of pirate sites is unknown, but PIPCU’s Detective Chief Inspector Peter Ratcliffe praised the collaboration.

“Working closely with rights holders and the advertising industry, PIPCU has been able to lead the way with tackling copyright infringing sites by successfully disrupting advertising revenue,” he said.

Next year we’ll see if the program continues to expand, and if so, at what rate.

BT Sport wins rights to show 2017-18 Ashes series when England defend urn in Australia

The next Ashes series Down Under will be shown exclusively live on BT Sport, as part of a new five-year deal with Cricket Australia.

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The 2017/18 Ashes series will be shown exclusively live on BT Sport, after winning a five-year rights deal for Australia home internationals that includes England's defence of the urn.

Cricket fans will see England defend the Ashes they won this summer when they travel down under in 2017/18, as part of 210 days of international Australian cricket to be shown on BT Sport.

BT Sport will show all Australian Test Matches, One Day Internationals and T20 Internationals played in Australia, including the five-match Ashes Test Series against rivals England in 2017/18.

Multiple series against world leading nations such as New Zealand, South Africa, India and Pakistan will also be broadcast on BT Sport.

The rights also include the hugely successful KFC Big Bash League, which see international stars flocking down under, including South African legend Jacques Kallis and former England international Kevin Pietersen.

BT Sport will also show the women’s Ashes and the women’s T20 Big Bash League.

BT Sport has also acquired a free-to-air rights package that includes daily highlights of international matches and the Big Bash League, as well as one Big Bash League ‘match of the round’ broadcast live and free each week.

The deal with Cricket Australia is in addition to BT Sport’s broadcasting of the annual Caribbean Premier League T20 cricket tournament, featuring some of the world’s biggest stars such as Chris Gayle.

Delia Bushell, Managing Director of BT TV and BT Sport, said: “BT Sport is delighted to be adding international cricket to its line-up, and to be the new home of the next Ashes tour in Australia.

"We will show live domestic games featuring the best players in the world during the Big Bash League and all Australian home matches for the next five years.”

Cricket Australia Executive General Manager of Media, Communications & Marketing Ben Amarfio said the agreement signalled a new era in Australian cricket broadcasting.

“We are delighted to be entering into this important new partnership with BT Sport,” Mr Amarfio said.

“BT Sport put forward a highly compelling bid for the rights to broadcast cricket from Australia to audiences throughout the United Kingdom.

“They are uniquely placed to become one of the UK’s largest sports channels and we think cricket can provide the content and opportunities to help them do just that.

“With more cricket content now available via BT Sport, free-to-air television and through our digital platforms, we are making the game more accessible to more people. The principle of taking the game to more people is very important in our efforts to grow the game.”

The level of Windows 10 paranoia reached new heights this week when reports suggested that Microsoft would wipe torrents and pirated software from people's hard drives. Nonsense, of course, but all the recent privacy concerns were enough to have the operating system banned from several torrent trackers.

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Since the release of Windows 10 last month many media reports have focused on various privacy intrusions.

The WiFi password sharing feature, for example, or the extensive sharing of personal data and information back to Microsoft’s servers. The list goes on and on.

While we’re the last ones to defend these policies, it is worth pointing out that many other large tech companies have similar privacy violating policies. Reading rants about Windows 10 privacy on Facebook is particularly ironic.

This week things took a turn for the worse. Slowly but steadily reports started pouring in that Windows 10 has a built-in piracy kill switch. If we were to believe some of the reports, Microsoft would nuke all torrents downloaded from The Pirate Bay.

The truth is nowhere near as dystopian though. The controversy originates from a single line in Microsoft’s Service Agreement which allows the company to download software updates and configuration changes that may prevent people from “playing counterfeit games.”

This change isn’t limited to Windows 10 but covers many services. Also, there is no indication that this will ever be used to target third-party games, which is highly unlikely.

Still, the recent privacy concerns have some torrent tracker staffers worried. During the week TF received reports informing us that several private trackers have banned Windows 10, or are considering doing so.

The staffers at iTS explain that Windows 10 is off-limits now because of the extensive amount of data it shares. This includes connections to MarkMonitor, the brand protection company which is also involved in the U.S. Copyright Alert System.

“Unfortunately Microsoft decided to revoke any kind of data protection and submit whatever they can gather to not only themselves but also others. One of those is one of the largest anti-piracy company called MarkMonitor,” iTS staff note.

“Amongst other things Windows 10 sends the contents of your local disks directly to one of their servers. Obviously this goes way too far and is a serious threat to sites like ours which is why we had to take measures,” they add.

While this may sound scary, Microsoft has been working with MarkMonitor for years already. Among other things, the company helps to keep scammers at bay.

There is no evidence that any piracy related info is being shared. Still, the connection is raising red flags with other tracker operators as well. More trackers reportedly ban Windows 10 and others including BB and FSC are consider to follow suit.

“We have also found [Windows 10] will be gathering information on users’ P2P use to be shared with anti piracy group,” BB staff writes to its users.

“What’s particularly nasty is that apparently it sends the results of local(!!) searches to a well known anti piracy company directly so as soon as you have one known p2p or scene release on your local disk … BAM!”

The same sentiment is shared at FSC where staff also informed users about the threat.

“As we all know, Microsoft recently released Windows 10. You as a member should know, that we as a site are thinking about banning the OS from FSC. That would mean you cannot use the site with the OS installed,” FSC staff writes.

While a paranoid mindset is definitely not a bad thing for people in the business of managing a torrent community, banning an operating system over privacy concerns is a bit much for most. Especially since many of the same issues also affect earlier versions of Windows.

Luckily, the most invasive privacy concerns can be dealt with by configuring Windows properly. Or any other operating system, application or social network for that matter.

Instead of banning something outright, it may be a good idea to inform the public on specific dangers and educate them how they can be alleviated.

One year ago UK police noisily took down Immunicity, a site dedicated to providing access to blocked websites. To mark this anniversary a new platform titled Hydra Proxy has launched with the aim of providing a takedown resistant service for all. TorrentFreak caught up with its founder to learn more.

In July 2013 a brand new anti-censorship service burst onto the scene. Aiming to service those who found VPNs too expensive but couldn’t live with the slow speeds provided by Tor, Immunicity provided swift, free access to a wide range of blocked websites.

The service quickly gained an enthusiastic following but just a year later in 2014 it was all over. With support from Hollywood, City of London Police arrested Immunicity’s then 20-year-old operator. A full 12 months later he remains on bail facing an uncertain future.

To mark this anniversary a new service has debuted to finish the job Immunicity started. Titled ‘HydraProxy’, the service isn’t just another run-of-the-mill unblocking tool but one that aims to grow like a hydra.

Hydra Proxy (HP) acts as a frontend to PacketFlagon, a system which in turn is based on the RoutingPacketsisNotaCrime software detailed in our earlier article.

“After the fall of Immunicity it would appear that most people have migrated to using SSH tunnels, Tor or commercial VPN products,” an HP developer informs TF.

“Unfortunately not everyone can afford (or wants) to do that so [Hydra Proxy] will allow those people to continue to evade overzealous filters at libraries, homes, coffee shops, mobile networks and fixed lines at no cost.”

Central to the system is the ability of popular browsers to use Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) files. Browsers are easily configured to use PAC files and in just a couple of minutes users are able to create their own to access any blocked site. Once configured, blocked sites open as usual.

“Essentially the RoutingPacketsIsNotACrime.uk software has been bundled up into a quickly deployable ‘shard’ which talks to a TLS secured common backend API to create, update and view Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) files,” Hydra Proxy’s developer informs TorrentFreak.

One of the main advantages of the project is that since anyone with the know-how can operate their own Hydra Proxy shard, the system becomes more diverse and capable of evading censorship.

“Volunteers can deploy HydraProxy shards which can create and serve PAC files whilst synchronizing with the central node to help frustrate blocks of the PAC serving servers. Or, they can deploy an entire stand-alone platform,” HP’s dev explains.

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There are already more than half a dozen Hydra Proxy shards in operation but the project is welcoming more.

“I’d encourage people to register other domains and we will even host them for free – they register a domain for use with PacketFlagon, they contact us and we’ll provide an IP to point the DNS at and then we’ll handle configuring the server and keeping the shard software up-to-date,” the dev says.

The hosting will be provided by Brass Horn Communications, a non-profit entity which not only operates PacketFlagon but also other ISP-esque services such as Tor exits, web hosting and Unix shells. Brass Horn Communications is its own ISP and has “mere-conduit” protection.

Somewhat refreshingly, HP’s developer says he is more than happy to share the fun with others.

“Everything is open-source under a BSD license rather than GPL as it’s more permissive. The goal is undermining censorship not bickering about who owned / misused what,” he explains.

“If someone has the time to take this software and create a commercial model then have at it, if someone wants to create their own independent infrastructure with new branding; please do!”

In conclusion, Hydra Proxy sends the following message.

“Centralization is what allowed the Internet to get in the mess where one DMCA against two companies kills an innocent users uploaded videos or a single court order against four ISPs censors 90% of the population. So take this truly free (as in speech and as in beer) software and help kick the censors’ ass!”

Let us know when both parties are happy and we will close the thread

Let us know when both parties are happy and we will close the thread

Spotify is generally considered to be a piracy killer. Thanks to the company's ad-supported free tier it guarantees a smooth transition from the dark corners of the Internet to a fully licensed service. However, Spotify is now warning that without its freemium option, piracy may surge once again.

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With the option to stream millions of tracks supported by an occasional ad, or free of ads for a small subscription fee, Spotify has proven to be a serious competitor to music piracy.

Since its first release in 2009 the service has conquered the hearts and minds of many music fans. Currently available in more than 60 countries, it is catering to dozens of millions of users.

In recent months, however, various prominent music industry insiders have called for an end to Spotify’s freemium option. With this move they hope that the company will increase its revenues and pay more compensation to artists and labels.

This is not a good idea, according to Sachin Dosh, Spotify’s Vice President of content and distribution. Killing the freemium model may result in more subscriptions but it may also boost piracy.

“We’ve done such a great job at Spotify of making piracy irrelevant, but that doesn’t mean it’s gone. It just means there’s no need for it right now,” Dosh told MBW.

“You could create that need again if you follow the wrong path,” he adds.

In recent years Spotify has caused a decline in music piracy rates in a few countries, something the company always envisioned it would. Having a free tier is an essential part of this chain.

According to Spotify’s exec the music industry realizes the risk of canceling the freemium option, which suggests that there are no concrete plans to change its model in the near future.

“…I think the industry does actually agree with a lot of this: instead of making free worse, the right answer is making premium better,” Dosh says.

Spotify’s comments on a piracy revival are in line with what we warned earlier. However, it is not the only threat. The recent push for more “exclusive” releases are another point of frustration for many music fans.

Various music services make deals to be the first to release new albums, such as Dr. Dre’s iTunes exclusive, making the piracy option relevant again for users of other paid services. This might not be a good strategy in the long run.

On that note, Spotify also has to be careful with privacy issues. A change to the company’s terms and conditions now allows it to access photos, phone numbers and sensory data from mobile users, which has quite a few users upset.

Now we don’t want these users, including Minecraft creator Markus Persson, to reconvert to pirates again, do we?

Quote from sapx

Does it work equally?

equally well for sure

Since its launch two years ago, the City of London Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) has requested domain name registrars to suspend 317 pirate sites. A lot of requests were denied, but police say they don't know how many. The numbers were made available in response to a Freedom of Information request by TF, which also reveals more interesting details.

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For most police departments online piracy has no priority, but in recent years City of London Police have made copyright infringement one of their main targets.

In September 2013 the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit was founded, marking the start of a broad enforcement campaign to decease online piracy rates.

PIPCU initially began by sending out warning letters to pirate site owners, asking them to go legit or shut down. Soon, this was followed by a campaign targeted at domain registrars, asking them to suspend the domain names of several “illegal” sites.

To find out the scope of both campaigns, TorrentFreak filed a Freedom of Information request asking for further details. While the police didn’t want to mention any names, fearing that this would promote piracy, we did receive some interesting statistics.

Since the launch of the unit two years ago PIPCU says it has sent warning letters to the operators of 377 ‘pirate’ sites. All of these sites were referred by entertainment industry groups and include most of the popular file-sharing domains.

The number of warning letters increased from 107 last year, suggesting that PIPCU intensified its efforts. While these warnings may have yielded results at smaller sites, we are not aware of any larger ones that shut down in response.

In addition to contacting site owners directly, PIPCU also approached domain name registrars with requests to suspend these pirate sites. In total, police sent out suspension requests for 317 domain names, up from 75 around the same time last year.

Interestingly, PIPCU notes that it has no information on the effectiveness of these requests. In other words, police don’t know how many sites were subsequently suspended by domain name registrars.

This is quite surprising as one would expect that the efficiency of their campaigns is being measured somehow. Also, the records we requested were available last year. At the time, police told us that only 5 of the 75 requests to domain registrars had been successful.

EasyDNS CEO Mark Jeftovic is one of the people who denied the PIPCU requests. While he is not against domain name suspensions, he stressed that his company wouldn’t take action just because the request is sent on police letterhead.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but I always thought it was something that gets decided in a court of law, as opposed to ‘some guy on the internet’ sending emails. While that’s plenty reason enough for some registrars to take down domain names, it doesn’t fly here,” he said.

Although the hundreds of voluntary warnings and suspension requests have not resulted in the downfall of any large pirate sites, the UK Government is happy with the progress made thus far.

Last fall Minister for Intellectual Property Baroness Neville-Rolfe secured PIPCU’s future until at least 2017. With a fresh £3 million cash boost the unit will continue its anti-piracy efforts during the years to come.

Quote from emosim

NO CA ERROR - HOW TO FIX For DM800HD box

External link removed and uploaded to the site

Quote from emosim

NO CA ERROR - HOW TO FIX For DM800HD box

External link removed and uploaded to the site

External link removed and uploaded to the site

External link removed and uploaded to the site

Following a complaint filed by anti-piracy group Rights Alliance, 20 leading 'pirate' sites will soon be blocked in Denmark. The blocking order, handed down yesterday by a district court, will be respected by the country's leading ISPs following the signing of a piracy code of conduct in 2014.

According to many of the world’s leading anti-piracy groups, site blocking is one of the most effective tools when it comes to reducing instances of online piracy. It’s a technique employed in a growing list of countries around the world, in Europe in particular.

After pioneering work seven years ago (Denmark was one of the first countries to block The Pirate Bay back in 2008), subsequent action by anti-piracy group Rettigheds Alliancen (Rights Alliance) ended in a 2011 ISP blockade of now-defunct music streaming service Grooveshark.

Earlier this year the anti-piracy group took fresh action that resulted in the blocking of 12 large sites including KickassTorrents, RARBG and streaming site Tubeplus. Now Rights Alliance is back again, with its biggest blocking effort yet.

After obtaining an order from the District Court in Frederiksberg yesterday, an additional 20 piracy sites will now be blocked at the ISP level.

Rights Alliance hasn’t yet revealed their names but speaking with TorrentFreak the anti-piracy group says that they’re the 20 most popular sites among local users and targeting them all at once has two distinct aims.

“By choosing 20 sites in one action it is really just adapting the means available to the internet and its ‘swarm activities’. Blocking one site at a time would make but a little disturbance, just redirecting the user request to other likewise illegal sites.” Rettigheds Alliancen CEO Maria Fredenslund informs TF.

“Swarm blocking provides a more massive intervention in the user flow, combined with positive communication nudging the users to legal sites, so it’s in fact possible to have an impact on user behavior.”

While Rights Alliance still needed to obtain a court order to have the latest batch of sites blocked, the process has been streamlined somewhat by a code of conduct signed by ISPs in 2014.

The agreement ensures that when a court issues an injunction against a single ISP ordering it to implement DNS blocking against a ‘pirate’ site (or in this case a large batch), within days all rival ISPs voluntarily implement similar blockades.

And for Danish users, the blocking won’t stop here. Maria Fredenslund says that the effort will continue for as long as the anti-piracy group views it as an effective tool to combat infringement.

“We have seen a 40% decrease in the use of Danish films in the BitTorrent network in the same period when we did the last ‘blocking wave‘. As with road signs in traffic, blocking signs – when placed and communicated right – can guide users away from illegal platforms,” the CEO says.

“Also, as experienced with the Popcorn Time action this week, the police are now also using blocking as an enforcement instrument,” Fredenslund concludes.

Is it a line you have created from your own server or one you purchased ?

Quote from Shakin1234

guess that what greed does to you

The irony being is this pair will sit watching sky free for the next few years whilst tax payers foot the bill

Premier League fraudsters jailed for illegally selling football coverage

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Simon Hopkins (left) and Leon Passlow (right) were both sentenced to three and a half years

Two fraudsters who illegally sold on access to Premier League football coverage defrauding BSkyB out of nearly £600,000 have been jailed.

Simon Hopkins, 47, of Slough, and Leon Passlow, 58, of Ascot, were sentenced at Guildford Crown Court on Wednesday to three and a half years jail each.

Hopkins and Passlow ran a firm in Bagshot, with a turnover of almost £2m a year, which obtained hundreds of domestic use only BSkyB cards.

The cards made use of fake names and addresses in an attempt to ensure the scam went unnoticed. These cards were then sold on to commercial premises, such as pubs, betting shops and yachts.

Although the companies the pair sold the cards to paid a large one-off premium for them, they still made huge savings on their monthly fees.

The companies were under strict instructions from Hopkins and Passlow not to contact BSkyB directly or they would face having their subscription cancelled.

A joint investigation by Surrey Police and the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) uncovered the scam, which represented a loss of earnings to BSkyB of £591,000.

The investigation got underway in May 2012 following complaints made to the Football Association Premier League (FAPL) from broadcasters and members of the public about Hopkins and Passlow's company, Digicam International Ltd (DIL), which was advertising its services on the internet.

DIL's website and paperwork given to subscribers said not to contact the broadcaster (BskyB) directly or it would "kill" their subscription.

The defendants' homes were searched in September 2012 and paperwork showed the company had a turnover of almost £2m a year.

The company, based in High Street, Bagshot, was also searched and had signs on the walls warning legal action would be taken against anybody associated with the FAPL or FACT entering the property.

'Painstaking investigation'

Detective Sergeant Chris Rambour from Surrey Police described the investigation as both "complex" and "painstaking" and stressed he hoped it demonstrated to the public the police would leave "no stone unturned to put offenders before the courts".

"We will now be pursuing further action under the Proceeds of Crime Act to confiscate any assets acquired by the defendants as a result of these offences," he said.

"A three and a half year custodial sentence sends a clear message: supplying systems which allow unauthorised broadcasts of Premier League football to be made in commercial premises is illegal."

The pair earlier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit fraud between January 2008 and September 2012 in a prosecution brought by the FAPL.

A spokesman for the FAPL added: "This judgement serves as a reminder to the pub industry, and other businesses which show live football, that Sky Sports and BT Sport are the only authorised broadcasters of live Premier League football in the UK.

"We would like to thank Surrey Police's Economic Crime Unit, and FACT, as their skilled investigation made the successful prosecution of this complex and large scale fraud possible.”

Hopkins, 47, of Park Road, Stoke Poges, Slough, Berkshire, and Passlow, 58, of Broomfield Drive, Ascot, Berkshire, were each sentenced to three and a half years imprisonment.

Source : http://www.getsurrey.co.uk/new…-jailed-illegally-9889718

Quote from lacierva

i wish i could get an update my hp pavillion lappy has'nt closed down properly since i updated on the first day of release, best to wait i think all those who have not yet updated,

Have to agree with you on this, all my pals have updated, but i am of the mind if it ain't broke why try and fix it