'Dodgy' fire stick users have been warned by authorities that they could soon face prosecution as a crackdown on illegal streams continues.
You'd struggle to find anyone in the UK who doesn't at least know one person with a dodgy fire stick (not me, officers) but soon it could be the average Joe who finds himself in jail, rather than just the distributors.
Police have already made a number of arrests in the UK, after a huge crackdown on distributors began last year, but that could just be the start.
Kieron Sharp, chairman of the Federation Against Copyright Theft, has revealed to the Mirror that users are also breaking the law and could soon be prosecuted.
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“This has been a problem forever, since the days of pirated video cassettes and DVDs. But the rise of streaming has made things easier for the criminal in the same way as it has made things easier for the legal consumer.
"Is it any more of a problem than it was years ago? That’s very difficult to say. There’s no complete picture of the landscape.”
Sharp certainly isn't wrong, as piracy has been a problem for many years, as all of you who have seen the 'you wouldn't steal a car' video will well know, although ironically it turns out that the font and the music they used in that was also pirated.
And while it's mainly been the distributors who have faced the long arm of the law, with 36 criminals jailed for an average of three years each since 2020, that could soon change.
Mr Sharp added: "We have adopted the attitude over the years that we would rather not criminalise the end user.
“If we take out a gang and they have a customer database, we would normally write to the consumers on that customer list telling them ‘What you are doing is breaking the law and you will have to stop’.
"We would like to think that they would start paying for that content.
“But it is entirely possible that consumers could get swept up in our investigations. It would be a discussion for everybody involved in the business to see if that is an area that we would want to go down.
"It could happen, it really could. I would never say to any of the consumers through the messaging that we do that they are not going to get prosecuted because that just isn’t correct.”
So, you might soon be left with a real Sophie's Choice, on whether it's worth paying for every streaming site so you can enjoy a 0-0 between Plymouth Argyle and Leyton Orient, or going to jail. I know what I'd choose.
Topics: Crime, UK News, Technology
James Moorhouse