11 years in jail for illegal streaming of football matches

[Laughingravy]

The ring leader of a gang who 'stole' football match broadcasts to stream illegally has been given an 11 year sentence. And his sidekicks between 3 and 5 years.

And yet you can kill someone, seriously assault someone, rape, empty peoples' bank accounts, make them scared in their own homes and a whole host of other serious crimes against real people and not get 11 years.

No surprise the prosecution was brought privately by the Premier League, whose lawyers said the prosecution was to protect "some of the world's most valuable content". Real cost of everything value of nothing attitude there.

AIBU to think somethings wrong with our society when 'stealing' like this is held more valuable than destroying people lives?

YANBU money over human lives again

I don’t think it should be a case of one or the other. Yes murder/rape etc have much more significant negative effects on the victim but I think the laws should be upheld for all crimes.

YANBU

And yet Michelle Mone, Dido Harding and the Tories in general are walking around scot free

Yanbu. That’s a ridiculous verdict when compared to rapes and murders.

Wasn't there a man about four years ago who tortured his girlfriend to death and got three years. He must be out by now.

Read Foucault … Our criminal laws originated to protect property and to punish theft of property.

If 21st century British women were considered to be the property of their fathers or husbands then rape would be considered a crime against the owners of property - and consequently treated at least as severely as stealing a loaf of bread in previous centuries …

YANBU
And totally agree with @PerfectYear321

YANBU...this is irrelevant compared to the street crimes and other crimes taking place everywhere, so what if someone watched a game through streaming...are they hurting anyone, it's all abou money these days. They got their priorities all wrong 😞

YABabitU. I understand concern over ridiculously short sentences for violent crime. But it doesn’t make this sentence unreasonable, it just makes those sentences unreasonable.

This isn’t a couple of teens using BitTorrent to get at some copyrighted content for personal use. They resold the streams, vastly undercutting the services that had paid for the rights, and made over £7million - with a potential loss in revenue for the legitimate streaming services of over £50million. It’s serious, high value crime. A long sentence isn’t unjustified.

Ok so what previous convictions does this person have?

It is theft of someone else's property but yes, your point is spot on in that laws are unequally applied.

Society is always quick to show that loss of money matters most in comparison to anything else.

People who kill, rape, torture, and do things like molesting children aren’t cared about. In the eyes of society, they’ve only impacted one person’s life or a small amount of people. Take money from a company that isn’t yours and you’ll feel the full hand of the law.

Society and governments don’t care about individuals and the impact’s these actions have on them. One thing they will care about is you taking money that isn’t yours. Disgusting tbh

There was a man around here who had been a high school teacher, well known for grooming girls. As it was, he married a former pupil. His son was in my kids year at school when he was imprisoned. The mother of the child didn’t show her face at school for a long time, other mums of kids in the same year were at school with her back then, same age as her.
There was a social media campaign that named the mum and the son - at which point I stepped in and reported to school because he's a lovely little boy and none of this was his fault. He was then taken under the wing of school pastoral care. The dad got away with less than a year in prison.
That little boy's family is broken now. If any kid in high school finds out about it, he'll be tortured mercilessly.
Yeah, the tiny prison sentence clearly helped so much.

I'm not saying they shouldn't be punished but that sentence is clearly all to do with a notional loss of £50 million. Watching the footage of the arrests I'm sceptical about them 'making' £7 million - no signs they were living like millionaires. And forgive me if I don't loose sleep over a business that can afford to pay it's favourite employees £300,000+ a week. That's just ugly.

But really that's why I asked the Q. Not because they got sentences that were too long but why, time and again, we are all disappointed with the punishments handed out for crimes against people and not those against rich peoples' pockets.

This!

Images of children were also found..

I was also shocked at the sentence.
I think you get less for manslaughter.

I don’t want to defend short sentences for rapists, I do think they are too short and there are many issues with the lack of governmental effort to tackle sexual assault.

But the reasoning behind high sentences for a crime like this is to do with the scope of the operation and the potential impact on business that would have a knock on effect on the public at large.

If streaming services could be easily undercut without there being a significant risk for the criminals involved it would proliferate and that would cut heavily into the revenue of legitimatee services and mean, eventually, that they are unable to continue to do what they currently do. While I personally couldn’t care less if the premier league overnight, there are millions of people who would and it’s not just football that would be at risk. Similar setups could put all TV services at risk.

Something that has the potential to undermine a significant sector of the economy is, from a public policy perspective, a threat that is graver than something that is targeted at individuals.