Piracy CRACKDOWN: Man forced to pay £16,000 for illegally streaming Sky Sports

A BRITISH man has been ordered to pay £16,000 for illegally streaming Sky Sports, the High Court has ruled.

The High Court has ordered a British man to pay thousands for illegally streaming Sky Sports online.

Mr Yusuf Mohammed, of Bristol, has been ordered to pay legal costs of more than £16,000.

Mohammed has also been ordered to disclose details about the money he made streaming Sky Sports content – as well as anyone he colluded with.

The Bristol man will have to pay damages to Sky.

FACT, which works to protect intellectual property in physical media and online, has praised the ruling from the High Court.

CEO Kieron Sharp said: “This is the latest action taken in the ongoing crackdown on illegal digital piracy.

“It should now be crystal clear to anyone thinking of pirating or watching a pirated stream that this is not a grey area and that it is illegal.”

The latest ruling comes one week after an individual admitted sharing the Joshua vs Klitschko fight on Facebook online.

The unnamed pirate agreed to pay substantial legal costs to Sky – as well as penning a written apology. The Joshua vs Klitschko stream was viewed by around 600,000 people.

The news comes as a 55-year-old shop owner was spared time behind bars after pleading guilty to selling so-called Kodi Boxes earlier this month.

Brian Thompson had originally denied the offences, setting up the prospect of a landmark court case relating to the sale of Kodi-powered devices.

The 55-year-old runs Cut Price Tomo's TV store in Middlesbrough.

Kodi is a neutral media player which can be installed on a wide range of hardware, including desktop computers, servers, smartphones, HDMI streaming dongles.

The media player is capable of streaming content from the internet, a home network or local HDD storage.

But while Kodi itself is perfectly legal, it does allow users to install additional apps that can enable access to copyrighted material – uploaded, shared or streamed from other users across the globe – without permission from the rightsholders.

Ready-made streaming set-top boxes, running on hardware from a variety of different manufacturers and preloaded with third-party add-ons that enable access to pirate content, are colloquially known as Kodi Boxes or ‘Fully Loaded’ Kodi Boxes.

At Teesside Crown Court, Brian Thompson was sentenced for one count of selling and one count of advertising devices “designed, produced or adapted for the purpose of enabling the circumvention of effective technological measures”.

Judge Peter Armstrong told him: “If anyone was under any illusion as to whether such devices as these, fully loaded Kodi boxes, were illegal or not, they can no longer be in any doubt. I’ve come to the conclusion that in all the circumstances, an immediate custodial sentence is not called for.

“As a warning to others in future, they may not be so lucky.”

The judge gave Thompson an 18-month prison sentence, suspended for two years.