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The number of people who disseminate sports or other channels illegally in the United Kingdom have been “through the roof” – the police forces already stretched in their efforts to pursue consumers who flout the law, said the head of the British intellectual property crime unit.
Emma Warbey, chief inspector of the detective and chief of the intellectual property crime unit of the police in the city of London city, admitted that individuals were largely able to use illegal fires “broken” without risk of arrest by her team, because the officers have targeted organized crime groups and resellers at the head of these regimes.
The use of Internet TV media boxes or “sticks” that can be used to illegally disseminate the content had become increasingly widespread, she said-which the broadcasters have warned the devalues on the sports rights market.
These boxes can be preloaded with software that can diffuse illegal sporty and canals around the world.
Warbey said it would be wrong to conclude that using illegal flows to watch sports and other paid television content was a way without risk of watching the media, pointing to fraud and funding of organized crime gangs.
She said that her team had concentrated efforts on the fight against “resellers and people at the top of the tree” since “it is really difficult to prevent people from doing so”.
She added: “We always follow the money and opt for the largest groups of organized crimes and the largest networks of organized crimes.”
Broadcasters and law enforcement agents have raised fears that the increase in the use of streaming The devices have helped normalize hacking for many sports fans in the United Kingdom and in certain parts of Europe.
The rise of hacked sporting risks undermining the value of exclusive football and other sports across the United Kingdom and Europe, they provide, with concerns that the use of illegal rivers has been considered a crime without victim.
Warbey said the police had discovered clear ties between pirated sports with money laundering and fraud, which should make users more cautious.
“These criminals use this money, your harshly earned money, for many different things, generally drugs, certainly forced work, trafficking of people, enormous quantities of other crime that you feed, so it is not a crime without victim.”
The police used letters “stop and abstain” initially with the lower level sellers of the illegal television services, Warbey said. “We say essentially:” We know what you are doing, this is the law that you are breaking, and if you continue, we will come to stop. “”
Such letters can be “very effective … because it is so widespread in the United Kingdom. If you were a 22 -year -old who did it from your room and the police showed up, it’s a huge impact. We cannot stop everyone in the United Kingdom who does it. So we try to look at other tactics. ”
Warbey has also warned that many consumers would also not realize that they gave their personal details to fraudsters and organized crimes groups, which increases the risk of fraud.
She said that the cost of living crisis had added to cases already increasing by people using illegal but cheaper to watch sports.
Last month, Sky criticized Amazon In order not to do more to fight against the use of its fire sticks in the hacked content in streaming. He believes that Amazon Sticks represents about half of the illegal streaming of Premier League football in the United Kingdom only, costing the “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
Amazon said it had prohibited the sale of illicit streaming devices on its market as well as on applications that have borne third -party rights. He added his Fire television service “included on warnings on devices informing customers of the risks associated with the installation or use of applications from unknown sources”.
London city police oversee the efforts to tackle hacking as a fraud manager, although the Warbey team is funded by the intellectual property office.
Companies such as Sky can also carry out private prosecutions and can work with other police forces across the country. Sky has won a high court prescription which forces internet service providers to prevent hacking services from being able to illegally broadcast their football matches and television programs.
Criminal surveys and judicial affairs can take months, which means that resources must be allocated to the biggest criminal gangs. Last year, the Warbey team was part of an international police operation that closed one of the largest illegal online streaming services in the world, used by around 22 million people worldwide. One of his oldest affairs goes to court in October.
Such cases have stressed the need to go for criminals “at the top of the tree, (which) will have tens of thousands of resellers across the country that sells it,” she said.
She said it was not just hacked sports; Criminals also sell access to all television and channel programs that are not available or should be paid in the United Kingdom. It also works in the other direction, with gangs selling British flows such as Iplayer in Europe.