The sentencing a few days ago of a 41-year-old man from Halifax to two years in jail for selling illegal Fire Sticks will probably have passed many of you by. It may seem like a harsh punishment for a crime of which you may not even be aware. What’s an illegal Fire Stick? What does it do? How would a person get one?
Apologies if you already know the answers to these questions. It is thought that more than a million people in the UK use illegally modified Fire Sticks, which are loaded with apps enabling the user to access pay-to-view streaming services at no cost (other than a relatively small annual subscription to the seller).
There is a demand for the enormous amount of content available – in particular, Premier League football, some of which is available in other parts of the world but not the UK – but the cost of the multiple streaming subscriptions now required to watch it is prohibitive for many people. And so some clever souls, with astute business sense and technological proficiency, are merely feeding the consumers’ appetite, and advertising these customised Fire Sticks through social media groups to give people access to a whole world of entertainment and sport at a fraction of the cost.
What’s not to like? Quite a lot, actually, as Sunny Kanda, the man who was imprisoned last week, found out. And also as Jonathan Edge, a 29-year-old from Liverpool, discovered two months ago when he was sentenced to three years and four months in prison for the same crime of copyright theft. In the wake of these trials, a spokesperson for National Trading Standards said: “Accessing pirated content through illegal TV Fire Sticks undermines the UK’s entertainment industry, putting its talented workforce and supply chains at risk by depriving them of fair earnings and revenue.” So, not exactly a victimless crime.
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Read MoreThe action against Edge was brought by the Premier League, who argued that “the selling of broadcast rights supports the Premier League’s industry-leading financial contribution to the whole football pyramid”.
Yet, while content piracy is indefensible, a little context is necessary to understand Edge’s defence. “He was providing a service to people who would probably not be able to afford it otherwise,” said his counsel. “There’s an element of a Robin Hood to all that.”
Take the matter of live football. When the Premier League first sold its rights to Sky, consumers understood the simple dynamic. They paid a monthly fee for Sky and in return would get more live football than they ever had before. But now, if you want access to the full panoply of live football on offer, you must have a subscription not only to Sky, but also to Amazon Prime and Discovery.
The competition between the streaming giants has meant that the last time domestic broadcast rights to live football were sold, the Premier League netted a whopping £6.7bn. Not unreasonably, this cost has been passed on by the streamers to their customers, who, in turn, feel they are paying an unconscionable and unsustainable price.
It’s not exactly a rip-off, but it goes some way to explain why the vast numbers of people who have these illegal Fire Sticks don’t think they are doing anything morally wrong. They are merely “gaming” the system, benefiting from a clever “life hack”, as the online world has it. It’s the law of market forces, isn’t it?
Meanwhile the crackdown will continue, and more people offering the same illegal service as Sunny Kanda will be jailed. It’s hard to know how this situation will resolve itself, but, as well as determined policing, a measure of proportion and sense must permeate the thinking of the streaming companies.
While they continue to make extraordinary profits, and seek to protect what’s rightfully theirs, they must also be mindful of the economic hardship, the rising costs and the technological literacy of their consumers.
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