The digital industry and sports organizations warn viewers about the use of illegal TV services. “People don’t know what they are giving their information to.”
The legal ones alongside pay-TV and streaming services, several pirate services have emerged, of which illegal IPTV services are an emerging trend. Now the Finnish digital industry together with the SM league, the Veikkausliiga, the Finnish Skiing Association and the Finnish Olympic Committee are trying to encourage people to use legal services.
According to a report published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO) in September 2023, digital piracy grew by 3.3 percent last year. A big part of this is the illegal viewing of sports.
According to the latest copyright barometer in Finland, eleven percent of Finns have watched, listened to or played content offered without permission on illegal services on the Internet. So there’s a lot more to watch sports in this chapter.
What is behind illegal viewing?
“People don’t know what they are giving their information to. Europol [Euroopan unionin lainvalvontayhteistyövirasto] still sees strong organized crime there. That’s a pretty strong claim. I wouldn’t give my contact information to such a gang”, says the CEO of Ficom ry, the Confederation of Telecommunications and Technology Elina Usa.
According to Europol, criminals use the income they receive from pirate services to finance other illegal activities, for example money laundering, drug and human trafficking and even arms smuggling.
Consumer may feel that he himself is not doing anything illegal, but the biggest risk is giving credit card information to a party that you don’t really know anything about.
It’s about the same thing as the ones that have come up recently on illegal websites of clothing brands, which look like an online store for a product. Illegal TV services may also look very “real”.
“It is difficult for the consumer to state that it is an illegal service,” states Ussa.
Ussa recommends to study the sites in more detail. For example, illegal IPTV services do not have common customer service information, so if, for example, the service does not work, there is nowhere to complain.
One and probably the main reason for using illegal services is the price of the service. Illegal services are significantly cheaper than legal services, sometimes even free, and you can watch even thousands of TV channels at a cheap price.
“The market situation has led to the fact that there is a gap for illegal services, but their use involves risks,” Ussa emphasizes.
“Illegals are certainly always able to be cheaper, because they don’t have to take care of their own nest.”
Ussa states that affordable TV services are the best protection against piracy. Cleaning up cybercrime itself, on the other hand, is difficult.
“The surest way is for people to be suspicious of them [laittomia] towards services.”
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