In the High Court, a court order was awarded to Sky blocking illegal streaming on Facebook forcing internet service providers to halt piracy services from unlawfully streaming its highest-watched football games and hit TV shows.
Blocking is considered one of the strongest defences against stopping piracy in the industry.
In one season alone, the Premier League’s UK blocking order assisted in the removal of over 600,000 illegal live streams.
The ruling will force United Kingdom (UK) online platforms to ban watchers from gaining illegal access to streams of an array of channels where the audience must watch the shows at a specific time, such as programs found on Sky Sports and Sky Atlantic.
Over the last couple of years, the usage of internet TV media boxes used to illegally stream content has become more popular and, typically, these boxes are preloaded with software that can stream channels from all over the globe.
Comparable to the order granted to the Premier League for all of the last four seasons, the latest order is framed to guard a large amount of content from being pirated.
Control is also given back to Sky who can now work to close down pirate sites streaming The Ashes on Sky Sports Cricket or the House of the Dragon on Sky Atlantic by employing a third-party group that detects the source of unlawful streams via IP addresses or dedicated servers which is then sent to ISPs to block admittance.
According to a Sky spokesman, the court decision would “help limit the supply of pirated Sky content,” he said.
“Blocking has been shown to be an extremely effective tool in tackling content piracy and is just one of a range of measures we take to protect our content and our business,” he added.
Beyond the court order, the police force has also gotten involved and has pursued a curtailment of criminals running illegal streaming networks.
Last month, five British men who were unlawfully selling IPTV “sticks” for the use of streaming networks for Premier League games were thrown into prison for up to 11 years.
This one team alone supplied streams to over 50,000 customers.
