In the 19th century, and for a full century before that in England, there was a tax on windows in homes in Ireland. The more windows a residence had, the more tax was paid by that property.
To get around this, many residences opted against letting daylight in. Windows were bricked up in order to get around the tax. It was a different time but one that saw people taking a practical approach to an impractical scenario.
Unless you’ve been living under a rock in recent months, you’ll no doubt have consumed plenty of content related to dodgy boxes.
The term is something of a catch-all for devices and apps used to provide access to live TV, particularly sport, in an unauthorised manner. The most popular delivery vehicle is an Amazon firestick but there are other methods of delivering the content through the web.
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Dodgy boxes don’t just deliver a lot of content at a price much lower than the legal rights holder or broadcaster can offer. They typically have one interface for everything that makes access easier, aggregating everything in one place.
Unsurprisingly, this hasn’t exactly proven popular with broadcasters and rights holders. The likes of Sky and Virgin Media have, understandably, been irked that others are profiting from what they invest into these services.
It’s a clear problem not only for them but also those selling rights, most notably the English Premier League (EPL), as it devalues the product by reducing sales for its partners.
Providers and rights holders are right to be annoyed and they’re right to seek to prevent sellers of dodgy boxes from interfering with their business models. There’s an effect down the levels; indeed, even I am indirectly impacted.
One of my other hats is as a play-by-play sports commentator. The more revenue that shifts away from the legal rights holders, the less they will spend on hiring the likes of me to work.
[ League of Ireland clubs losing total of €1m revenue because of dodgy boxesOpens in new window ]
The thing is, everything up to now when it comes to dodgy boxes has been focused on the problem. The debate has been entirely framed around why using these devices to stream content is wrong.
That ticks the boxes of harm to broadcasters and those working for them, of potential fines for those caught using or distributing dodgy boxes, and even the risk of malware from using them. Yet dodgy boxes are still in demand.
The focus instead needs to be solution-oriented. Most users would, and historical examples show this, be less likely to avail of dodgy boxes if the convenience they provide was matched by legitimate broadcasters.
At present, the market is fragmented and the EPL, easily the top driver of dodgy box usage, is an obvious example. In Ireland, a user needs subscriptions to Sky, TNT and Premier Sports to access all of the live games.
While the cost load is a factor, the mental load can’t be ignored. Fans have to work to find out where they can watch their game while also managing the payments of multiple subscriptions.
With Sky’s Now TV, that involves buying two separate bundles for all of the sports stations from Sky, TNT and Premier Sports, which comes to about €73 a month combined. Similar packages can be bought through Eir and Virgin Media. Of course, that is separate to all other TV used, just to add to complications.
Now think about the core customer’s journey. Their goal is to access the content they want in the easiest way possible. The market response is teaching us that the breakdown of packages right now isn’t doing a sufficient job in helping them to do that.
Enforcement, as we see it now, clearly isn’t getting the job done. If it was, we wouldn’t be hearing so much about dodgy boxes.
Yet there are examples of piracy markets being reduced enormously in the internet age. The arrival of Netflix and other entertainment streaming platforms helped reduce the torrenting of films and TV, while Spotify did much the same for music.
It wasn’t that consumers of film and music suddenly felt afraid of criminal sanction or concerned about the feelings of rights holders. These were platforms providing easy and reliable access in one interface to content that, crucially, wasn’t likely to have malware or bombard the user with pop-ups.
Sky and Virgin Media might well contend their current packages are easy to manage for all consumers. If you removed the word all from that sentence I’d even agree with them. The problem is too many right now aren’t being wooed sufficiently to move away from unauthorised options.
[ Dodgy box Q&A: Could I face prosecution?Opens in new window ]
The broadcasters can cry to the Garda about it or they can focus on solving the problem. It makes a lot more sense to do the latter.
Right now they’re playing an unending game of whack-a-mole. As soon as one dodgy box provider is taken down, two more pop up. If they reduce the demand for dodgy boxes by changing up their own packages, they’ll starve the unauthorised market.
The window tax was done away with in 1851, with changes to more practical methods of taxation being introduced. A descendant of that adaptation is familiar to most readers – PAYE. Whatever amount you pay that way, it’s certainly more convenient to manage.
