That’s followed up with a comment from Kevin Plumb, Premier League General Counsel, who said: “It is vital that the public continue to be made aware of the dangers and criminality associated with using illegal streaming services,” as a lead up to the following:


While observations are obviously subjective, the terms ‘Firesticks’, ‘hacked Firesticks’, ‘chipped Firesticks’ and others, are now well-recognized by the general public as piracy devices.

More savvy individuals will likely understand that the device type is largely irrelevant, so that might be an indication of the demographic the Premier League hopes to reach with its campaign.

Other Matters in Focus

Interestingly, the Premier League’s press release shines light on reports in January that police and FACT were conducting home visits to around 1,000 users of a pirate IPTV service. In reality, the number of actual home visits was much lower but the Premier League has confirmed those targeted were customers of Mills.

“The enquiry and subsequent raids by police provided intelligence which identified more than 1,000 of his customers. In January this year police and FACT officials visited a number of those individuals, serving notices to cease illegal streaming activities with immediate effect,” the Premier League adds, noting that resellers of Mills’ services are “currently under investigation.”

The final pieces of messaging woven into the release are as follows:

[Mills] was also convicted of a separate offense for watching the illegal content that he was supplying to others, with the court recognizing that his own use of the unauthorized service was a distinct crime in itself. Mills received a separate prison sentence for this offense
This seems to suggest that when people get caught simply watching pirate streams, this is the potential outcome. Clearly, if anyone is running a pirate IPTV operation over a period of five years and is then accused of watching pirate streams on top, the risk is very real indeed. In fact, it’s happened before.

In his sentencing remarks the judge in the case commented on the sophistication of the operation. The judge highlighted the use of Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and recorded tutorial videos which supported his customers to access the illegal content
ISP blocking is of vital importance to the Premier League, so it comes as no surprise that VPN technology gets a mention here. There’s no doubt that with enough mentions, published by dozens of news websites, the notion that VPNs are either illegal or simply linked to things that are illegal, will eventually seep into the mainstream consciousness.

Whether that will make any difference is another matter.