5 ms·

I'm surprised it's not made more clear in the article, but it's important to note that as well as being an ISP, Sky are a more traditional subscription TV provi

by srmarm 5y ago

I'm surprised it's not made more clear in the article, but it's important to note that as well as being an ISP, Sky are a more traditional subscription TV provider. They have the exclusive rights for most of the Premier League TV on their channels (paying ~ $1.65bn a year for the these rights[0]) - it's probably the main pull to their , so it's very much in their interest to fight off piracy of it. [0] https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-channel-changes https://www.sky.com/help/articles/sky-channel-changes

MereInterest 5y ago
Something being in their best interest doesn't mean that it's ethical. This is still a gross invasion of privacy. I agree that it is in their best interest, but would argue that their TV and internet services should be split into separate companies so that the company interest and the user interest align.
- Mindwipe 5y ago
  Gross invasion of privacy? They aren't doing blockings of individuals here, they are looking at aggregate traffic to certain sites, and literally every ISP on the world does that because they need to optimise their peering arrangements for high traffic, high QoS sites (such as installing OpenCache for Netflix).
  - paranoidrobot 5y ago
    The difference between aggregating traffic for the purposes of internal network management, and sending traffic data to a third party is not hard to see. It's also a vastly different type of aggregation.
    - Mindwipe 5y ago
      > The difference between aggregating traffic for the purposes of internal network management, and sending traffic data to a third party is not hard to see. Is it? If they send it to a third party technical subcontractor for internal network management is that bad? If they publish a chart publicly of the top ten websites our users visit is that bad? (That's very common). If they pass the data to geofiltering vendors to use for threat intelligence to reduce DDOS attacks is that bad? Fraud? What exactly is the obvious line here that you think exists, other than "I don't like copyright."
      - jollybean 5y ago
        They are sending it to a third party so that party can use indirect behavioural information to enforce commercial contracts. Imagine McDonald's selling data to your insurance provider so they can help determine your rates etc.. It's definitely out of bounds and worth putting up a fuss over.
        crtasm 5y ago
        But they're not sending any customer data in this case. It's a list of IPs of servers that are seeing traffic spikes on their network, not IPs of customers connecting to them.
  - White_Wolf 5y ago
    By your logic you'd by fine with your phone provider handing over all call logs and recordings to the govt too along with full browsing history, location data... you know... since they already have the data.
    - Mindwipe 5y ago
      > By your logic you'd by fine with your phone provider handing over all call logs and recordings to the govt too along with full browsing history, location data... you know... since they already have the data. In the UK all phone providers are required to keep all call logs, location data etc for six months to hand over to the government in a variety of circumstances, so that ship sailed a long time ago. However, that is the most broken comparison I could possibly imagine, so no.
    - denton-scratch 5y ago
      We're not talking about "call logs". Sky is collecting information about where their heavy traffic is going, which as Mindwipe says, is just sensible network management. Then they share some of that data with 3rd-parties. That's not information about their customers; it's the IP addresses of IPTV servers they've been streaming from. They could be sharing information about which customers have been streaming from those addresses; but that's not what the article is claiming. I subscribe to Sky satellite for TV. I get my broadband elsewhere. The Sky box is not susceptible to inspection, and since it integrates online "catchup" services, it might well be using my broadband connection to send home information about my viewing habits. The Sky box also creates a shadow wifi network, by default. The shadow network uses at least two wifi channels. On the face of it, this is to allow multiple Sky boxes on the same household account to communicate with one-another, share recordings and so on. I'm not keen to have wifi networks I don't control piggy-backing on my ISP connection; and since I only have a single Sky box, I disable toe wifi. I trust Sky as far as I could throw them, so I have plans to find out what my Sky box is talking to, and firewall it.
      - 88 5y ago
        If you are using one of the newer Sky Q boxes, my anecdotal understanding is that they phone home a fairly terrifying amount of telemetry data. Would certainly be a fascinating project to MITM and figure out exactly what is being sent.
- enkid 5y ago
  I think the parent comment was highlighting the conflict of interest and moral hazard here, not excusing the behavior.
- tablespoon 5y ago
  > Something being in their best interest doesn't mean that it's ethical. They don't care about ethics if it gets in the way of making money. That's the beast that is capitalism.
Lio 5y ago
Yep that makes sense. I would also expect BT and their subsidiaries (plus.net, giffgaff, ee, etc) to be involved as BT also off a subscription based BT Sports service. Got to wonder if simply using a VPN would sort the problem out or if they could make the case in court that the volume of traffic and the time it was downloaded matches the pirate stream. Seems dubious.
- petepete 5y ago
  I bet Virgin Media will be under pressure to follow suit too, seeing how lots (probably most) of their TV offering is from Sky.
- mprev 5y ago
  Not that it really matters but GiffGaff is owned by the newly combined Virgin Media O2.
  - signal11 5y ago
    Yes, IIRC Giffgaff was originally owned by Telefonica, O2’s parent. Never by BT.
    - Lio 5y ago
      Ok right you are. What's weird though is that O2 were once BT's mobile arm (BT Cellnet) so it's all still a bit incestuous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O2_(UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O2_(UK)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- bentcorner 5y ago
  While a VPN might technically work it doesn't excuse the overstep from Sky. IMO this shouldn't have happened in the first place. Makes me wonder if we (technically proficient users) are coming at this from the wrong angle. Ads? No problem, adblock. Bittorrent scare letters? No problem, VPN. Tracking? No problem, pihole/firefox/linux/lineageos/whatever. We are solving these problems at the wrong end and are leaving less-capable users behind.
HighChaparral 5y ago
Precisely. I would have been shocked if they weren’t doing this. Despite their attempts to diversify their offerings ober the years, their Premier League coverage is the lynchpin of their entire business.
toyg 5y ago
That's sadly the case for most large-scale UK providers, they all have an interest in content. The "convergence" mantra in business circles made that an inevitability ever since the times of AOL-TimeWarner. You can look at Netflix today to see very clearly why nobody wants to remain a "dumb pipe" in the long run, once they get big enough.
koyote 5y ago
Also worth mentioning that they were recently (2018, I guess not that recently anymore...) bought by Comcast.

by srmarm 5y ago

MereInterest 5y ago

Something being in their best interest doesn't mean that it's ethical. This is still a gross invasion of privacy. I agree that it is in their best interest, but would argue that their TV and internet services should be split into separate companies so that the company interest and the user interest align.

Mindwipe 5y ago
Gross invasion of privacy? They aren't doing blockings of individuals here, they are looking at aggregate traffic to certain sites, and literally every ISP on the world does that because they need to optimise their peering arrangements for high traffic, high QoS sites (such as installing OpenCache for Netflix).
- paranoidrobot 5y ago
  The difference between aggregating traffic for the purposes of internal network management, and sending traffic data to a third party is not hard to see. It's also a vastly different type of aggregation.
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    > The difference between aggregating traffic for the purposes of internal network management, and sending traffic data to a third party is not hard to see. Is it? If they send it to a third party technical subcontractor for internal network management is that bad? If they publish a chart publicly of the top ten websites our users visit is that bad? (That's very common). If they pass the data to geofiltering vendors to use for threat intelligence to reduce DDOS attacks is that bad? Fraud? What exactly is the obvious line here that you think exists, other than "I don't like copyright."
    - jollybean 5y ago
      They are sending it to a third party so that party can use indirect behavioural information to enforce commercial contracts. Imagine McDonald's selling data to your insurance provider so they can help determine your rates etc.. It's definitely out of bounds and worth putting up a fuss over.
      - crtasm 5y ago
        But they're not sending any customer data in this case. It's a list of IPs of servers that are seeing traffic spikes on their network, not IPs of customers connecting to them.
- White_Wolf 5y ago
  By your logic you'd by fine with your phone provider handing over all call logs and recordings to the govt too along with full browsing history, location data... you know... since they already have the data.
  - Mindwipe 5y ago
    > By your logic you'd by fine with your phone provider handing over all call logs and recordings to the govt too along with full browsing history, location data... you know... since they already have the data. In the UK all phone providers are required to keep all call logs, location data etc for six months to hand over to the government in a variety of circumstances, so that ship sailed a long time ago. However, that is the most broken comparison I could possibly imagine, so no.
  - denton-scratch 5y ago
    We're not talking about "call logs". Sky is collecting information about where their heavy traffic is going, which as Mindwipe says, is just sensible network management. Then they share some of that data with 3rd-parties. That's not information about their customers; it's the IP addresses of IPTV servers they've been streaming from. They could be sharing information about which customers have been streaming from those addresses; but that's not what the article is claiming. I subscribe to Sky satellite for TV. I get my broadband elsewhere. The Sky box is not susceptible to inspection, and since it integrates online "catchup" services, it might well be using my broadband connection to send home information about my viewing habits. The Sky box also creates a shadow wifi network, by default. The shadow network uses at least two wifi channels. On the face of it, this is to allow multiple Sky boxes on the same household account to communicate with one-another, share recordings and so on. I'm not keen to have wifi networks I don't control piggy-backing on my ISP connection; and since I only have a single Sky box, I disable toe wifi. I trust Sky as far as I could throw them, so I have plans to find out what my Sky box is talking to, and firewall it.
    - 88 5y ago
      If you are using one of the newer Sky Q boxes, my anecdotal understanding is that they phone home a fairly terrifying amount of telemetry data. Would certainly be a fascinating project to MITM and figure out exactly what is being sent.
enkid 5y ago
I think the parent comment was highlighting the conflict of interest and moral hazard here, not excusing the behavior.
tablespoon 5y ago
> Something being in their best interest doesn't mean that it's ethical. They don't care about ethics if it gets in the way of making money. That's the beast that is capitalism.

Lio 5y ago

Yep that makes sense. I would also expect BT and their subsidiaries (plus.net, giffgaff, ee, etc) to be involved as BT also off a subscription based BT Sports service. Got to wonder if simply using a VPN would sort the problem out or if they could make the case in court that the volume of traffic and the time it was downloaded matches the pirate stream. Seems dubious.

petepete 5y ago
I bet Virgin Media will be under pressure to follow suit too, seeing how lots (probably most) of their TV offering is from Sky.
mprev 5y ago
Not that it really matters but GiffGaff is owned by the newly combined Virgin Media O2.
- signal11 5y ago
  Yes, IIRC Giffgaff was originally owned by Telefonica, O2’s parent. Never by BT.
  - Lio 5y ago
    Ok right you are. What's weird though is that O2 were once BT's mobile arm (BT Cellnet) so it's all still a bit incestuous. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O2_(UK) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O2_(UK)
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
bentcorner 5y ago
While a VPN might technically work it doesn't excuse the overstep from Sky. IMO this shouldn't have happened in the first place. Makes me wonder if we (technically proficient users) are coming at this from the wrong angle. Ads? No problem, adblock. Bittorrent scare letters? No problem, VPN. Tracking? No problem, pihole/firefox/linux/lineageos/whatever. We are solving these problems at the wrong end and are leaving less-capable users behind.

HighChaparral 5y ago

Precisely. I would have been shocked if they weren’t doing this. Despite their attempts to diversify their offerings ober the years, their Premier League coverage is the lynchpin of their entire business.

toyg 5y ago

That's sadly the case for most large-scale UK providers, they all have an interest in content. The "convergence" mantra in business circles made that an inevitability ever since the times of AOL-TimeWarner. You can look at Netflix today to see very clearly why nobody wants to remain a "dumb pipe" in the long run, once they get big enough.

koyote 5y ago

Also worth mentioning that they were recently (2018, I guess not that recently anymore...) bought by Comcast.