Interesting article.
http://www.techcentral.ie/sky-turns-machine-learning-tackle-premier-league-piracy/
http://www.techcentral.ie/sky-turns-machine-learning-tackle-premier-league-piracy/
Sky turns to machine learning to tackle Premier League piracy
- Thread starter jaymac
- Start date
Taylerlee
Member
Yes, an interesting article, not sure I understood very much other than its obviously not good news. On the bright side the way I read the article it gives me the impression the Sly CEO, 'Mo' likes the sound of his own voice and is more of a salesman than a technology expert. Just an impression, hope I am right!
From what I thought they've been trying to tackle this for years with different operations etc but they never seem to work all you hear about is that the odd one or two that they prosecute eventually. I think slowly that there will be no 3pm premier league kick offs on a Saturday soon they will have all Premier games other times and days to accommodate the piracy issue.
Speedygonzal
Member
Actually all the major ISPs "monitor" which website you are accessing via their DNS servers. If you don't believe me, and if you do not have any protection, try entering https://thepiratebay.org into the address bar of your browser.
The best way to stop ISP snooping is not by shopping ISP, but by using vpn. If one look hard enough there are good deals around. I got a lifetime sub of VPN Unlimited for £13. It has proven to be no worse than PIA, a regular favourite.
For this month, one can get VPNSecure for about the same price here.
steptoe
VIP Member
actually
I can access TPB freely
I've just downloaded a file by coincidence
yes, all ISPs can monitor your use, but do you really think they are actually doing so.?
sly has publicly stated they are actively monitoring your usage and the sites you access.
blocking tpb is easy, they already know the web address, and its variants, so a simple word block works mostly.
blocking streaming sites requires them to search and find the IPs first,
do you think most ISPs will waste resources [profit] doing something they dont have to.?
Speedygonzal
Member
Yes, certainly. Since they can't block you from a site without monitoring you, and as you can see blocking has been in place for years.
Yes and no.
Yes. Nearly all the largest ISPs are incentivised to spend money on killing piracy, because it undermines the rights to contents they sell. This is clearly illustrated by para 7 of this court order.
No. They don't all have to invest in finding offending streams, but because of the court orders (think there are 4 now including the one in the preceding paragraph), they are all obliged to kill offending streams, in real time, when e.g. Premier League or UEFA tell them to.
steptoe
VIP Member
I disagree,
they dont have to automatically monitor you to block you from a site,
they just block everyone from that site
think of a building site with gates, they simply padlock the gate to stop anyone from entering,
now, if they wanted to allow certain people access, they would need to monitor the entrance by pacing a security guard there to monitor who goes in and who doesnt,
they dont monitor the entrance, they just block everyone by locking the gate
if you are using an ISP that doesnt block it, it because they havent locked their gate into the site
pabloescaban
VIP Member
you've got to look at the bigger picture.
This has been going on for many years and isp's, sky, virgin etc did nothing about it. The only time they did do something about it was when the Premier League / FIFA went to court to get a court order to force them to do something about it...they wouldn't be doing anything without that court order because it's not in their interest - they know those who are watching games by illicit means would never take a subscription with them anyway so they've lost nothing on that side. By rooting them out and waging war on them they are losing something - they're losing millions of viewers, albeit non-paying viewers but they still count when selling air time to Pepsico or GoCompare....'how big is the audience?' - 'Well we have 9 million paying customers and an estimated 3 million non paying customers, so 12 million in total, probably more'
All the figures are out there, advertising agencies know about all this, it's no secret and these figures are taken into account when negotiating advertising deals. By eliminating the 3 million extra customers, they're shooting themselves in the foot, which is why they did nothing until someone else forced them to
This has been going on for many years and isp's, sky, virgin etc did nothing about it. The only time they did do something about it was when the Premier League / FIFA went to court to get a court order to force them to do something about it...they wouldn't be doing anything without that court order because it's not in their interest - they know those who are watching games by illicit means would never take a subscription with them anyway so they've lost nothing on that side. By rooting them out and waging war on them they are losing something - they're losing millions of viewers, albeit non-paying viewers but they still count when selling air time to Pepsico or GoCompare....'how big is the audience?' - 'Well we have 9 million paying customers and an estimated 3 million non paying customers, so 12 million in total, probably more'
All the figures are out there, advertising agencies know about all this, it's no secret and these figures are taken into account when negotiating advertising deals. By eliminating the 3 million extra customers, they're shooting themselves in the foot, which is why they did nothing until someone else forced them to
Speedygonzal
Member
Perhaps we are talking about semantics. They are all monitoring the url you try to access, which you don't seem to count as monitoring.
Your explanation is attractive, but I don't think it is correct. If we follow your argument, the like of Sky/BT would have paid more to PL/UEFA for rights IF PL/UEFA did not fight piracy - because Sky/BT could then tell their advertisers they have 12+7 million viewers, not 12+3, so there is no incentive for PL/UEFA to fight piracy either... which clearly is not the case.
The reality is Sky/BT have different earning streams - subs as well as advertising, and they do charge a lot of money, from a lot of subscribers, for e.g. "Sports". They know that if piracy is not stopped, there will be no subscriber eventually. Conversely, taking your argument to its extreme, if increasing audience for advertising revenues was the prime income objective, Sky/BT would have put their PL/UEFA games on FTA already.
pabloescaban
VIP Member
they're just paying lip service to PL/UEFA.
how come no other sporting bodies have made a noise?
Golf
F1
Rugby Union
Tennis
Darts
Rugby League
Cricket
Etc, etc etc - if they all kicked off, the iptv streams would be constantly blocked....which also begs the question, if they can block live football, and Sky/BT wanted isp's to block all sports, why haven't THEY been to court to force isp's to block the streams when any live sport is showing? - they don't want that, why?
how come no other sporting bodies have made a noise?
Golf
F1
Rugby Union
Tennis
Darts
Rugby League
Cricket
Etc, etc etc - if they all kicked off, the iptv streams would be constantly blocked....which also begs the question, if they can block live football, and Sky/BT wanted isp's to block all sports, why haven't THEY been to court to force isp's to block the streams when any live sport is showing? - they don't want that, why?
Speedygonzal
Member
I don't watch most of the above. However, F1 is broadcast live FTA by e.g. the Independent's Blog. World Cup was FTA on ITV. Wimbledon was on BBC... I am not sure how anybody can go to court in UK claiming piracy is damaging one's bottom line when it is broadcast FTA. It is usually easier to deduce why somebody does something costing time and money, rather than why not doing something.
I think we all know PL/UEFA football is a different kettle of fish altogether, isn't it?
pabloescaban
VIP Member
you've missed the point entirely:
why haven't Sky/BT been to court to secure an order forcing ISP's to block streaming of all live sports? - we all know it can be done as Premier league have done it.
Naming one or two FTA events is pointless, Ryder Cup, Rugby Superleague, all the Rugby union comps and other Tennis, Cricket and Golf tournments are lucrative to the broadcasters. They know it's possible to block them all yet they don't, why?
why haven't Sky/BT been to court to secure an order forcing ISP's to block streaming of all live sports? - we all know it can be done as Premier league have done it.
Naming one or two FTA events is pointless, Ryder Cup, Rugby Superleague, all the Rugby union comps and other Tennis, Cricket and Golf tournments are lucrative to the broadcasters. They know it's possible to block them all yet they don't, why?
steptoe
VIP Member
I'd love for you to point me in the direction of FTA MotoGP , WSB, or even BSB @Speedygonzal
the very occasional race is FTA , but, imho, thats to get people to watch and hopefully subscribe to the normal pay channel, same as a lot of football.
the very occasional race is FTA , but, imho, thats to get people to watch and hopefully subscribe to the normal pay channel, same as a lot of football.
Speedygonzal
Member
Na. It is not me who is missing the point.
You ask why haven't Sky/BT been to court for an order forcing ISP's to block streaming? That is an easy one - there are at least two reasons:
1) If I were an ISP (say Tesco), I would ask Sky/BT why haven't you done it already since you are an ISP yourself? If Sky/BT did do it off their own bat, then punters might simply move to other ISPs en masse. But the better reason, is,
2) Sky/BT are not the copyright holders of the contents. If you had read the PL ruling I attached above, you will see that the case relies on copyright laws. Sky/BT are merely distributors of the contents, not owners.
Regarding why other sporting organisations haven't made a noise, who knows what all their reasons are. If I were e.g. Ryder Cup's owner, I would ask myself whether people are going to the dark side because they wanted to watch Ryder Cup for 3 days in the year (probably not), is it worth my while to go through all the effort for sticking it to them for 3 days once a year (probably not).
By the way I have just noticed that none of these other issues you and Steptoe now raised has anything to do with the OP, which is snooping by ISP, and consequently how best to protect oneself against ISP snooping.
steptoe
VIP Member
I think it is.
my point was exactly that sly have now publicly admitted to snooping and monitoring exactly what its users do,
no other ISP has said they actively monitor their users usage
this is the exact point I have been making all along,
perhaps you should actually read what is written, and not what you want to see
Speedygonzal
Member
What you are saying is surprising to me.
Surely one has to be pretty naive to somehow think that Sky has been the only ISP snooping and monitoring what users do, because if that was the case, how could any other ISPs have sent warning letters to punters for downloading/uploading/streaming copyright materials, and which has been going on for years?
I once saw a letter from bt telling the user exactly which film he watched when he shouldn't...
It seems to me this debate is going round and round in circle. The bottom line, as I have stated all along, is: 1) avoiding only sky as your ISP is foolhardy - one can trust none of the major ISPs to not snoop on you and monitor what you do, and 2) the best way to avoid that, is to use a decent vpn. If anybody disagree with that, please provide your evidence.
Similar threads
- Locked
