These IPTV companies, in my experience, never advertise that it's illegal. It's just give us money for a lot of TV channels, just like a cable company does.
It's like those folks that sold bootleg DVDs out of their trenchcoats in Manhattan - the defense of "gosh, I never knew buying a just-released-in-theaters Hollywood blockbuster for $5 by some dude on the side of Broadway was illegal" was never going to fly.
Possibly, but not always. When Red Pocket and the other cheap mvnos came around, people were skeptical for the same reason - but it was all above board.
Pricing depends on sales channel and price. If you slum the dregs of shady marketplaces, you can get it for like 3 or 4 bucks a month. But in more mainstream settings, resellers often try to charge as much as 20 or 30 (or more) per month which isn't quite as drastic.
In the US, a few people in my mom's friend circle were raving about their 'magic box.' It cost a couple hundred but got TV, so they were happy. AFAICT it's some shady actors buying cheap android boxes and flashing some iptv software with service preconfigured. These people don't even know they're using iptv.
Is buying bootleg DVDs actually illegal? Isn’t the thing protected by copyright distribution? The seller is doing the distribution, I’m only buying it so it’s fine, no?
A few decades ago our family got a 'proper' company with a shop front to install a satellite dish for us. We were then able to watch the Sky Tv from the UK even though we were not based in the UK (we still paid for a subscription but it was billed to a proxy address). This was the 'gray' part of what the company was selling.
What they also sold was sattv boxes with integrated decryption that would allow you to watch pretty much any European Pay TV (albeit not Sky, as they used a more robust encryption scheme) for free. They never mentioned the legality of it but they definitely advertised it as something they openly sold (in shop and in their ads).
Why? There's lots of cases where there's much-cheaper alternatives. I have a mobile phone plan that costs a small fraction of what most of my coworkers pay, because I didn't get a full-service unlimited plan with a subsidized new-every-2-years phone, for instance. Is my phone company hacking into the other company's system to give me service? Who knows, but I trust the government regulators and judicial system enough to assume this isn't happening, or else the company they're riding on the back of would have the service stopped. In reality, low-cost mobile services like this contract with the big carriers to use their spare capacity, and the service is basically 2nd-class too.
It's not a consumer's job to know how businesses operate internally or if they're doing something illegal.
Can you PROVE they knew it's illegal service?
It's not what you know, it's what you can prove.
https://youtu.be/1hUWPBvppvU?si=WtYEX12H3kxRlKUU&t=8
And honestly many of these websites look really professional and even legal services have various very cheap promotions, so good luck proving they knew they were paying for illegal service. It's exact same reason why in EU uploading copyrighted movie is illegal, but downloading it is legal, since you can't know whether the source is legal or not unless they would advertise with big letters THIS IS ILLEGAL DOWNLOAD FOR YOU.
Everyone in the country knows this and either has one or a family member has one
It's like buying something from the local market, those Adidas trackies are either a knock-off copy, or knocked-off stolen, but if they're 1/4 the price then they're still going to sell to someone.
The only thing I'd point out is that a security researcher found that a significant number of those grey market pirate boxes they tested had malware on them. So using them can open you up to a whole lot of risk. After all, there's no accountability for those pirates!
I'm not sure they are. I watch stuff on youtube and some probably violates someone's copyright which is an issue for the people posting it but I'm not sure I've broken the law by watching it? Obviously laws vary by which legal system you are involved with.
I'm pretty sure most users know that using the service is... "dodgy".
Paying for this via a bank is just asking for trouble!
(De anonymozation of third parties and non-crime search warrants respectively)
When it became independent, all laws weren't suddenly repealed, some were just ammended over time (as any common law system does). It's my understanding that Irish Courts can still refer to court cases from other common law countries in terms of precidence, even now
The Wikipedia article on Anton Piller orders¹ has this to say about their use in Ireland:
> Anton Piller orders have been granted by the High Court in William A. Grogan (copyright owner of RAMDIS) v. Monaghan Electrical Ltd & Michael Traynor (1998) related to an unlicensed copy of the RAMDIS software system, Joblin-Purser v. Jackman and Microsoft v. Brightpoint, but the issue has not come before the Supreme Court and, owing to the civil nature of the order and the strong protection given to the family home in the constitution, it currently exists in something of a grey area.
IPTV is a term for some clearly standardized and perfectly legal technology to deliver television services. Check the wikipedia page and definitions maybe [0]
[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internet_Protocol_television
But it's not the articles that are driving it, it's the pirates themselves who have done it and the articles following that nomenclature. If you go online the search results for IPTV are very much about pirate services and tools now.
In the previous work I was involved in, I was responsible for technical measures against piracy and had to get comfortable with the services being called IPTV.
Personally I would never do piracy without both of these protections. It's not perfect but it doesn't matter. You just have to be harder to catch than the lowest hanging fruit.
Like the guy running from a bear said to the other guy: I don't have to outrun the bear, just to be faster than you :)
[1] https://youtu.be/Fb5-Lts5EPs?si=18f8_A5ky-7kw_XW&t=131
this is probably good start for amateurs (you can watch them in VLC through CTRL+N or just install on Android TV some viewer like OTT Navigator)
