UK - The chiefs of the Football Association are up in arms over an American website that shows live football streams for FREE.

As well as the usual culprits of p2p streams from China, the new culprit is San Francisco based video website Justin.tv

Viewers can avoid paying high monthly payments to UK TV companies Sky and Setanta who hold exclusive rights to show the live games. As well as watching what paying customers can see, viewers can even watch matches that arent being broadcast by these companies.

A recent Manchester United game had over 167,000 hits, while others received 148,000 viewers.

Premier League spokesman Dan Johnson said:- ‘We are in contact with this site and their lawyers and are seeking to prevent any further abuse of our rights. The streaming of live Premier League matches without permission is not only illegal, but also unfair on fans who have paid to go to matches or subscribed to Sky and Setanta.

International matches including England World Cup qualifying games are also shown live on Justin.tv. This despite the fact that Setanta Sports have exclusive rights.

FA chiefs have said that their lawyers will be commencing legal action against Justin.tv. A spokesman said: ‘We are aware that websites around the world are seeking to exploit the popularity of English football. We take any infringements of our broadcasting rights very seriously and we will be looking at this particular website very carefully. We always take action to protect our rights and will do so again in this case.’

The huge popularity of Justin.tv started when founder Justin Kan started a web stream of his everyday life and broadcast over the internet.The website which was launched March 2007, has grown quickly and has thousands of user channels showing everything from dog breeding to growing tomatoe streams.

However the live football streams are amongst the most popular areas of the website, especially amongst UK and European users. The concept of the site is a simple one. Anyone with a cam can point it at something from their living room or at a tv set showing sports and movies. The feed is then played on their channel on Justin.tv

And because of this a popular football game can be seen on many channels on the site making policing of them difficult.

So whilst the companies concerned grapple with who can stream what and when, take advantage of all the free football streams available

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