Is IPTV Legal? The Law in Canada, the United States and the United Kingdom

Copyright Act, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-42

Section 3(1)(f) gives the copyright owner the sole right "to communicate the work to the public by telecommunication", and s.2.4(1.1) provides that this includes making it available on demand "from a place and at a time individually chosen by that member of the public". Doing either without consent is infringement under s.27(1), and s.27(2.3) separately makes it an infringement to provide an internet service "primarily for the purpose of enabling acts of copyright infringement". A rights-holder may elect statutory damages under s.38.1: between $500 and $20,000 for each work where the infringement was for commercial purposes, but a single award of between $100 and $5,000 covering all works and all infringements where it was not. The Act's criminal provisions (s.42) target knowingly making, selling, renting, distributing, exhibiting or importing infringing copies for commercial purposes, with maximum penalties of a $1,000,000 fine and/or five years' imprisonment on indictment, or $25,000 and/or six months on summary conviction. The consolidation on the Justice Laws site is current to 2026-06-21. [1], [2], [3], [4], [5]

Federal Court blocking orders and damages awards against sellers

Enforcement runs through the Federal Court rather than the broadcast regulator. In Bell Media Inc. v. GoldTV.Biz, 2019 FC 1432, Justice Gleeson issued Canada's first site-blocking order, directing the major ISPs to block the domains and IP addresses of a pirate IPTV service that had ignored two earlier injunctions; the Federal Court of Appeal affirmed the order in Teksavvy Solutions Inc. v. Bell Media Inc., 2021 FCA 100, finding jurisdiction under ss.4 and 44 of the Federal Courts Act reinforced by s.34(1) of the Copyright Act, and the Supreme Court dismissed leave to appeal (File 39876). In Rogers Media Inc. v. John Doe 1, 2022 FC 775, Justice Pentney granted the country's first "dynamic" order, requiring ISPs to block streaming-server IP addresses identified in real time during live NHL games. Justice Little's judgment of July 9, 2024 (2024 FC 1082) extended the approach to a two-year, multi-league order covering live NHL, NBA and Premier League telecasts, noting that the third-party ISPs, who "committed no wrongful acts at all", did not oppose its final terms. Sellers are also sued directly: in Bell Canada v. L3D Distributing Inc. (INL3D), 2021 FC 832, Justice Fuhrer awarded $29,300,000 in statutory damages against vendors of pre-loaded set-top boxes and IPTV subscriptions, calculated at $10,000 per infringed work under s.38.1(1)(a), plus punitive damages and costs. The CRTC, asked by the FairPlay Canada coalition in 2018 to administer a blocking regime, declined on the basis that it "does not have the jurisdiction under the Telecommunications Act". [6], [7], [8], [9], [10]

What a viewer in Canada is exposed to

Every Canadian action cited on this page was brought against operators (sued as "John Doe"), resellers of boxes and subscriptions, or the ISPs that carry their traffic; none names a subscriber as a defendant. A viewer's statutory exposure is civil. Under the notice-and-notice regime a rights-holder may send a written infringement notice to the ISP (s.41.25), which must forward it to the account holder and keep records identifying that person for six months, or one year if the claimant starts proceedings (s.41.26). A notice may not contain a settlement offer or "a request or demand ... for payment or for personal information" (s.41.25(3)). If a rights-holder did sue an individual for non-commercial infringement, statutory damages are capped at a single award of $100 to $5,000 covering every work in the proceeding (s.38.1). In practice the dynamic blocking orders also mean that unlicensed live-sports streams may stop working in Canada during the game window, because ISPs are required to block the identified servers. [11], [12], [4], [6]

Recent cases and actions

17 U.S.C. ss.106, 501, 504, 506 and 512; 18 U.S.C. s.2319C

Section 106 reserves to the copyright owner the exclusive right "to perform the copyrighted work publicly", and s.501(a) makes anyone who violates that right an infringer whom the owner of the exclusive right may sue (s.501(b)). Civil statutory damages under s.504(c) run from $750 to $30,000 per work, rising to $150,000 per work where infringement is proved wilful and falling to $200 where the infringer was unaware and had no reason to believe the act was infringing. Criminal infringement under s.506(a) requires wilfulness plus either commercial advantage or private financial gain, or reproduction or distribution of works with a retail value over $1,000 in 180 days, and is punished under 18 U.S.C. s.2319. The Protecting Lawful Streaming Act (Pub. L. 116-260, div. Q, title II, s.211, December 27, 2020) added 18 U.S.C. s.2319C, which makes it unlawful "to willfully, and for purposes of commercial advantage or private financial gain, offer or provide to the public a digital transmission service" that is primarily designed for, has no commercially significant purpose other than, or is intentionally marketed for publicly performing copyrighted works without authority. Penalties are up to three years' imprisonment, five years where works being prepared for commercial public performance are involved, and ten years for a second or subsequent offence. The DMCA's s.512 safe harbours protect service providers that operate notice-and-takedown and have "a policy that provides for the termination in appropriate circumstances of subscribers and account holders ... who are repeat infringers" (s.512(i)(1)(A)). [13], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18], [19]

Department of Justice prosecutions and studio civil actions

Jetflicks is the reference criminal case. After a 14-day trial that ended in June 2024, a federal jury in the District of Nevada convicted Kristopher Dallmann, Peter Huber, Jared Jaurequi, Felipe Garcia and Douglas Courson of conspiracy to commit copyright infringement; Dallmann was also convicted of criminal copyright infringement by distribution and by public performance, and of money laundering. The Justice Department described it as the largest internet piracy case ever to go to trial, and the first illegal-streaming case to do so: a subscription service that at one point claimed 183,285 television episodes, scraped automatically from pirate sites and served to tens of thousands of paying US subscribers, with the infringement conservatively valued at $37.5 million. Sentences imposed on May 29 and 30, 2025 ran from 84 months for Dallmann and 18 months for Huber to time served, home confinement or probation for the others; two earlier co-defendants had been sentenced in the Eastern District of Virginia in May 2021 to 57 months and 12 months and a day. On the civil side, the studios acting through the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment obtained a judgment in the Central District of California (Judge Josephine Staton) against the operator of Outer Limits IPTV, awarding $15 million for wilful copyright infringement, a permanent injunction and attorneys' fees; the service had offered more than 13,000 films, 3,000 series and 4,000 live channels. [20], [21], [22], [23], [24]

What a viewer in the United States is exposed to

The felony statute reaches a person who "offer[s] or provide[s] to the public" a digital transmission service, not the people who watch it. When it passed, its sponsor's office stated that the law "will not sweep in normal practices by online service providers, good faith business disputes, noncommercial activities, or in any way impact individuals who access pirated streams or unwittingly stream unauthorized copies of copyrighted works", and consumer group Public Knowledge called it "narrowly tailored" so as to avoid "criminalizing users, who may do nothing more than click on a link". Viewers are not outside the law, however: any unauthorised reproduction or public performance is civil infringement under s.501, with per-work statutory damages under s.504(c), and ISPs relying on the s.512 safe harbour must maintain and enforce a repeat-infringer termination policy, which is the mechanism behind infringement notices and account terminations. The prosecutions and civil judgments cited here all name operators and their associates; none names a subscriber. [17], [25], [26], [14], [15], [18], [20], [23]

Recent cases and actions

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, Digital Economy Act 2017 and Fraud Act 2006

Section 16(1) of the CDPA reserves to the copyright owner the acts of copying, issuing copies, performing, showing or playing the work in public and communicating it to the public; doing any of them without licence is infringement (s.16(2)). Section 107(1) makes it an offence, without the owner's licence, to make for sale or hire, import, possess in the course of a business, sell, offer, or distribute an article that the person knows or has reason to believe is an infringing copy, and s.107(2A) makes it an offence to infringe copyright by communicating a work to the public in the course of a business, or otherwise to an extent that prejudices the owner, where the person intends to make a gain or knows or has reason to believe the owner will suffer loss. On indictment both carry up to ten years' imprisonment; s.32 of the Digital Economy Act 2017, in force from 1 October 2017, raised the online maximum from two years to ten and added the gain-or-loss element. The Fraud Act 2006 is used alongside it: s.11 (obtaining services dishonestly, up to five years on indictment) and s.7 (making or supplying articles for use in frauds, up to ten years). Section 97A of the CDPA gives the High Court power to grant an injunction against a service provider that "has actual knowledge of another person using their service to infringe copyright", which is the basis of the ISP blocking orders. [27], [28], [29], [30], [31], [32]

High Court live-blocking orders and criminal prosecutions

In The Football Association Premier League Ltd v British Telecommunications Plc [2017] EWHC 480 (Ch), the High Court granted the first s.97A order aimed at streaming servers rather than websites, requiring the defendant ISPs to block the servers delivering infringing live streams while matches were being played; the first order ran to 22 May 2017 and was renewed and widened by Arnold J in [2018] EWHC 1828 (Ch). Criminal enforcement is led by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at the City of London Police, regional forces, Trading Standards, the Federation Against Copyright Theft (FACT) and rights-holders bringing private prosecutions. In the Flawless case, five people were sentenced at Chesterfield Justice Centre on 30 May 2023 to a combined 30 years and 7 months for conspiracy to defraud, money laundering and contempt of court, the ringleader receiving 11 years, after a Premier League prosecution of an operation that took more than 7 million pounds in five years from over 50,000 customers and resellers. In July 2025 PIPCU reported a 36-year-old jailed for three years and one month at York Crown Court for distributing articles infringing copyright and money laundering through three IPTV hosting brands, and in February 2026 four arrests in Manchester with ten servers seized. In August 2026 a 68-year-old from Chorley was jailed for six and a half years at Preston Crown Court for conspiracy to defraud after a PIPCU investigation found 80 servers and 980,812 pounds in profit, and a Merseyside man received a 32-month suspended sentence for making or supplying articles for use in fraud. [33], [34], [35], [36], [37], [38], [39]

What a viewer in the UK is exposed to

The UK is the only one of the three markets in the sources here where a viewer has been sentenced for watching. On 12 November 2024 Jonathan Edge of Liverpool received three years and four months at Liverpool Crown Court, after pleading guilty to three Fraud Act offences, for loading illicit streaming services onto Fire sticks and selling them; the sentence included a separate, concurrent two years and three months "for accessing and viewing the content he was supplying". FACT and the prosecuting Premier League presented that element as establishing that end users, not just suppliers, can be prosecuted, although the case arose from a supply operation and no standalone viewer prosecution appears in the sources. In December 2025 FACT contacted more than a thousand people by email and text, using customer records seized by police from two illegal streaming operations, warning them to stop or risk prosecution and stating that viewers "are potentially liable to prosecution for criminal offences, including under Section 11 of the Fraud Act 2006". Government guidance from the Intellectual Property Office states plainly that "using illicit streaming devices is illegal", that users of unauthorised sources "may be committing a crime", and that such devices often lack parental controls and have failed electrical safety standards. The earlier industry campaign, Get It Right from a Genuine Site, run by the BPI and the Motion Picture Association, was educational rather than enforcement-led. [40], [41], [42], [30], [43], [44], [45]

Recent cases and actions