British Police Arrested Another “Pirate”

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The British Police arrested a man suspected of running streaming services providing unauthorized access to subscription-only sports TV services. This arrest is already the third one for the UK Police in the streaming sector.

The City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit seems to have become one of the most active anti-piracy outfits, though it is only one year old. The agency employs various strategies in its fight with “pirates”: they write to domain registrars to threaten them and work with advertisers to choke the revenues of infringing websites. Aside from this, the unit also relies on old-fashioned police work: it arrested several people in the country and shut down dozens of domains – mostly torrent site proxies.

The outfit is very interested in piracy of TV-destined material, particularly that involving live sports. This week, a 27-year-old man in Manchester was arrested, alleged to have operated a series of websites providing access to subscription-only TV services. The police explained that the domains were sports-focused, and taking into account the premium pay TV landscape in Britain, it seemed probable that they infringed the rights of content owners. However, no details have been confirmed yet.

Although it is unknown how popular the streaming service was, the agency called the size of the operation they shut down yesterday “industrial”. They also claimed they seized a dozen of computer servers streaming global sports, while the site operator was arrested and taken for questioning.

The City of London Police’s Intellectual Property Crime Unit claimed that the recent operation marked the 3rd arrest in relation to online streaming. Apparently, this should send out a strong message that the police are after people who knowingly commit or facilitate online copyright violation. The spokesperson pointed out that not only is there a significant harm to industry, but it is also unfair that other people work hard to afford their subscription-only TV services, while pirates just cheat the system.

The police refused to disclose the names of the targeted websites, so it is hard to assess the significance of the operation at the moment. But given that police are usually quick to seize the domains of the targeted services, the signs of that are expected to surface within the next few days, and the industry observers will get a chance to conduct a detailed assessment of the shutdown.

Indeed, this arrest is the third one that involved a streaming website operator in the country. For example, in April they arrested the operator of BoxingGuru.co.uk, boxingguru.eu, boxingguru.tv and nutjob.eu, and in May police had the domain of the Cricfree.tv streaming portal suspended. In the latter case, the site operator managed to bring the website back under a new domain. The latest arrest was also the first one since the arrest of a torrent site proxy operator a month ago.