IPTV?
4 min read
You may or may not have heard of IPTV in the past, or maybe you are using it now without knowing that it has a name. Basically what IPTV is the technology to deliver to you, the viewer television and movies on demand over the internet. Services like Hulu, ITV hub, BBC iPlayer, HBO go and the like all these can be referred to as IPTV.
The initials IPTV just mean Internet Protocol Television or the ability to stream your media rather than rely on a dedicated cable, satellite or over the air transmission to get it to you.
The other side of the IPTV coin..
Now whilst these services are the happy legal way to view this content, when you com accross the term on the internet it mainly shows up when people or companies are offering you a cheaper service, a way, for a fixed monthly or yearly, seemingly too low amount, to give you access to these services through them. They may offer you 1000s of movie channels including premium, or all american television channels in one place which is too good to be true…isnt it.
Well it is too good to be true as in most cases its just plain illegal. You see along with the legal way for you to access them why not just pay, make your money back by sharing what you have.
Is what they are doing illegal then, offering you the service for cheap. well..YES. What they are doing is reselling you the unencrypted service at a fraction of the cost, they will have to subscribe themselves or get hold of someones login, then they set up one or two servers themselves in a nice remote part of the country they want to watch from. So for services in the USA or England they need to be there to be able to stream, so they rent a server, sign in to the service of their choice and stream the output themselves to a second server in a country with much laxer copyright laws. So this second server they use, puts together all these channels they get and share this out to whomever pays for access. By doing this they are breaking the law, but as they are providing the stream through a country that, basically, doesnt care there is nothin that the service providers can do until they can trace it to somewhere that does care.
So you go on facebook, twitter or even just search tthe internet pay your money and take your chance.
Roll the dice… take a chance
So whats wrong with that, well for one, royalties, the makers get nothning, and like the old warnings on VHS video piracy jeoperdises future video production, as they get nothing they dont have the money to invest in new material. So they have to pay out to trace these services, and they do. Easiest way is to pretend to be a customer, pay the small fee and get access to the service. They then use this access to backtrace the server, they can then trace that back to its origin, and take legal action. This takes time, all the while they are losing money, but when they find the server in their own or a partner country they can shut it down. And anyone who has signed up for that service, who can they go to for a refund… well no-one this isnt legit so your money is lost. This happens daily not monthly or yearly, you see it all the time adverts on facebook for the service, you pay for a month and the next day its gone and so are the sellers. Gone into the dark of the internet to start again.
Should you take the gamble?
So for IPTV please think twice before answering an ad for 1000s of channels at one off cost, it simply cant be done, not yet anyway.. Also take a minute too think who the original providers might come aftter for some money, by using these low cost cracked services you are opening yourself up to being fined, if they cant find the provider odds are they can trace some of their users. If they can find you they can force your internet provider to identify you and your address, they can then issue legal proceedings against you, the people you bought from are long gone so you will get no help, by using the service you are commiting the offence, breaching their copyright and they have proven in the past more than willing to go after you the user when they cant get the provider… happy viewing…
Remember, services need to be paid for, they need to be maintained, repaired monitored… this costs money… sorry.
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