Don’t worry big six, Newcastle will find a way to mess it up…

Send us your responses and mails on new subjects to theeditor@football365.com

Just like my school reports, we must do better
The last few weeks have been strange for us all. For some, it has highlighted some of the more glaring inequalities in modern life. It has shown some of us what is actually important, and helped us realise what we actually need in our lives. These weeks have also made it very clear that many of us are absolutely consumed by the immorality that the wealthy insist we adopt.

It’s okay for a murderous regime to take over a football club because the current owner is a prick? Is attempted genocide more palatable than being tight? Exactly when and where will we draw the line? Not as football fans, but as decent human beings? When will we stop forcing ourselves to accept, support, and admire evil behaviour? This isn’t just about Saudi Arabia or Qatar. It’s about our entire world. We are dictated to by the worst people in society. The vastly wealthy control the media and pump lie after lie into us. And a lot of us know this. We have a government that actively takes from the poorest to give to the wealthy, that lies constantly. A lot of us know this too.

There are no good billionaires. To be a billionaire in a world in which children starve to death every single day, in which hard-working kind people are suffering, is to demonstrate a deep level of immorality. Bill Gates says he will give away his fortune and we all fall over ourselves to say how wonderful he is. But the last time I checked he was still as rich as Croesus, living in the richest country in the world, where people die daily because they cannot afford medical treatment.

If this is printed I suspect there will be many people keen to disagree. Because they are brainwashed by the system. We are taught to hero-worship these people because we are supposed to aspire to be as rich as humanly possible. Our belief in better is systematically eroded to the extent that we laugh off the horrors as ‘just the way it is’. We are in a health crisis that is highlighting the awful way our government has treated the NHS (an organisation the Tories never wanted to exist), and our front pages talk of how brave our absent PM is. We live in a right-wing nation, with propagandised media. And we think we are the good guys?

Ask yourself why the billionaire owners of media outlets are so happy to give footballers an absolute kicking. And why are we so quick to pile on? Why do we let people who think NOTHING of us dictate our thinking? We allow lies to become the narrative. We argue on behalf of people who would leave us to die in the gutter, out of some sense of reflected glory. Please, can we try and be better? For each other?

This has little to do with football, I appreciate that. But there is one distinct truth that has been raised as a result of the current crisis: football makes its own community. It is no sunshine and rainbows dreamland, it is not without many flaws. But it is also swelled full with good people. So in this time, instead of coming up with reasons why the Saudi regime is actually quite nice, or why Levy’s initial decision made perfect financial sense, remember that you are better than that.

The world struggles today. It’ll burn soon enough. Let’s be better than the billionaires. Let’s show them that, no matter how they may sneer at us paupers, WE are what makes everything tick. Without us there wouldn’t be any billionaires. They owe us, not the other way around. Don’t let them use your devotion and love as a means of making you yet another corporate mouthpiece. We are better than this.

Stay safe. Stay kind.
thayden

Emotions of a Toon fan…
F365 are particularly excellent at channeling our nostalgia, whether it’s a spine-tingling moment from football eras gone by or a sexy Serie A striker from the 90s it gives us that little dash of excitment, reminding us of emotions of yesteryear. As a lifelong Newcastle fan I realised while I’ve still found myself screaming at the TV or in a stadium with delight or despair (usually the latter) at my team, in recent years there’s no excitement, no real purpose to watching. This is the impact of Ashley’s era and why Twitter and gossip column rumours are exciting for the first time since the early-mid 2000s.

I used to think that i’d grown out of it – scanning to see which fancy foreign star we were being linked with, believing at the start of the season there was a chance – just a chance that perhaps this would be the year we finally win a major honour and I could finally stop saying to my mates we were the biggest club in the UK to have won no major honours, (sorry Championship & Intertoto) since the 60s. What I’ve realised is that it’s not something you grow out of, with the talk of a (morally dubious) takeover on the horizon, Poch, Rafa, Allegri and even Bale/Countinho rumours swirling it has come flooding back, even as we wait for Ashley to stick in a last minute ask regarding 10 more years of Sports Direct signage at St James’ and make it all fall apart.

So I for one will continue to dislike the Saudi government – exporters of radicalism and war while committing human rights violations at home. But should it go through please don’t begrudge us our excitment and the occasional over the top individuals. For a lot of us we’ve never stopped loving the club and the team but we haven’t felt that visceral excitement that finally, finally this year could be our year in what seems like an eternity. While the wait is torturous even just the hope is bringing back emotions that I haven’t felt since I was a kid buying football stickers, or a teenager playing football in my Shearer 9 shirt in the park before a well earned rest in front of Football manager.

Just seen the headlines about Poch being favourite SHOULD the takeover happen and the hope has come rolling in again. For those non Toon fans please wish us luck – even if we do aim to challenge your teams at the top. I wouldn’t worry too much, I’m sure we’ll find a way to mess it up, but there’ll be a lot of excitement along the way.
Tarqs NUFC, Woolwich

Man Utd need the other half of a midfield
Too much bloody non-footy in the mailbox. Come on guys and girls, can’t we have some banter about “Liverpool fans, don’t worry, it will be your next year” or the sort or did I miss that? I liked the mail about Jose / Poch and the Bobby Ewing moment.

However, I’m writing in response to the mail about Man Utd not needing midfielders. In short, yes we do as probably lots of other mailboxers will point out although our rivals would probably be quite happen if we didn’t strengthen there. I am not worried about our defence anymore, we can give Bailly or Lindelof time to mature into a partner for Maguire and we have plenty of fullbacks / wingbacks. Similarly, in attack, I don’t see the problem. It would be great to get Mbappe or Kane but that’s not going to happen. We have plenty of decent young forwards who just need time and some decent service that they haven’t been getting until Fernandes arrived. Rashford, Martial and Greenwood are quality, although unfinished, and Ighalo adds a further dimension which I hope they can learn from. We could undoubtedly improve our defence and attack with stupid money but the midfield is the more pressing need now by far.

Perreira was mentioned in a list of our midfielders. WTF – he shouldn’t get near to a premiership team, let alone one with title ambitions (one day). Lindgard may well be able to do a job at another club but he has had too many chances with utd. The two of them are complete liabilities. Matic and Mata are players who can do a reasonable job if called upon which is not a reason to keep them if we have any ambition. They need to be shipped on.

Fred and McTominay have been great, Fernandes a revelation.The difficult question is Pogba but let’s assume he comes back and starts playing near his best for utd. Then we basically have a midfield of Fred, McTominay, Fernandes and Pogba. And there I would agree that midfield 4 would be top class. However, an often used analogy in commentary that sticks in my mind is how they often judge the strength of a team by who is on the bench. You do not win titles with 4 quality midfielders, you need a squad with 6 to 8 quality midfielders fighting for places. Kevin de Bruyne is one of the best midfielders in the premiership but City barely noticed his absence when he was out for almost a year. That shows proper strength in midfield. I remember when Man Utd were in their prime they had one Nicky Butt as a regular for England who couldn’t get in the Utd team. If Pogba stays he needs to have to fight for his place.

And a question for mailboxers that might be more relevant to us Utd fans and the Spurs fans – who would you like to see Jose inflicted on in the near future? For me it’s a tough one, I’d like to say City or Pool but he might actually be OK with their squads and other than them, I don’t think I’d want to wish him on any other club – maybe he’d suit someone like Galatasaray.
Jon, Cape Town (‘working’ from my garden)

On streaming and incentivisation
On the broader subject of streaming and intellectual property theft, rather than wasting time talking about whether it is “immoral” (literally moralizing), I’d like to talk about incentivization. Basically, are we as people incentivized to steal IP, or are we incentivized to pay for it? There are a lot of factors involved: What type of IP is it, how much do you care about it, what alternatives are there, what is the cost of not stealing it, how difficult is it to steal, what is the likelihood of getting punished for it, what are the advantages/disadvantages of each option, etc. I believe that you can use this framework to analyze why specific people steal specific types of IP in specific countries, at specific moments in time.

Getting the obvious out of the way, this is why the analogies many have provided don’t hold up to scrutiny. You typically cannot sneak into a cinema, theatre, concert hall, football stadium without paying without getting caught and/or punished. When there is no risk, people certainly do sneak into these venues. Surely I’m not the only one who has been to back-to-back films at the cinema, purchasing only 1 ticket?

In more depth, to take my life as an example, I grew up in the late 90’s/early 2000’s illegally downloading TV, movies and music. At the time, nobody really did anything to prevent online piracy. I always purchased video/computer games because it was very difficult to steal a lot of them, especially online ones. I went to university in the US from in the mid 2000’s. Industries were beginning to crack down on online privacy, so I avoided illegally downloading IP while in the US. I began watching club football at this time. Back then, you had to use relatively complicated programs like Sopcast to obtain streams. It often didn’t work, or was laggy, and almost always had commentary in languages I did not understand. I therefore subscribed to the relevant sports packages at the time.

After returning to Switzerland after university, I went back to illegal downloads, where there continues to be no punishment for consumers who pirate IP via peer-to-peer sources (even now, despite recent revisions). However, at some point in 2011-2012, I was introduced to Spotify. I really don’t “care” about music at all – I enjoy it, I listen to 30-60 minutes most days, but I’m not the type of person to actively seek out music, especially new music. Spotify has almost all of the music I’d want to download illegally, and more importantly, introduces me to new music, either algorithymically or via playlists. Despite the fact that I do not care about music, I have paid $10-15 a month for a Spotify subscription for the last 6 years, and I never consider cancelling it. Meanwhile, I continue to illegally download TV and films, even though I care far more about both than about music. There is no incentive for me to subscribe to Netflix – they don’t have everything I want to watch produced by other networks, and I’m not impressed with their ability to suggest new quality content, based on the nonsense Netflix subscribers watch (Tiger King and BirdBox both come to mind).

Turning to football, for most of 2009-2015, I believe it was literally impossible for me to have a TV subscription with Premier League matches on it in Switzerland. This changed at some point – but the only commentary available in Switzerland comes in German, despite being a trilingual country and me living in a French-speaking city. I am not going to pay for a subscription to watch football matches in a language I don’t understand – to use the closest parallel for those living in England, would you pay for your Sky/BT subscription if the commentary was in the “Irish Traveller” (apparently “p***y” is offensive?) dialect of Brad Pitt in the film Snatch, instead of being in English? I’m guessing not.
Anonymized Mailbox Regular, Geneva, Switzerland

PS:  Surely I’m not the only one who laughed heartily and merily at Steve, THFC accusing Lewis of getting his analogy wrong, before claiming that streaming football matches is a parallel to “seeing musicians live”. No, Steve, watching football matches live is a parallel to seeing musicians live. Streaming football matches at home is a parallel to seeing streaming a new release film on pay-per-view at home, which would cost what, $10 in most countries? (I cannot actually do any research on the pre-COVID19 possibility to live stream in-stadium concerts from home, because if you google “live streaming concerts” these days, all you find are results about quarantine virtual concerts…) Your analogy is markedly less accurate than the one made by Lewis. 

It must be good to have so much spare cash to throw around on expensive football subscriptions that you can also afford to look down upon those whose love for football makes them stream illegally because it’s either SKY/BT or putting food on the table for the wife and kids…
Ded Revil (Proud Illegal Streamer)

Theft means not only that you have taken something that you didn’t pay for, but also that you are depriving the owner of it. If someone streams illegally, that has not removed the match from Sky’s possession. They still have the match.

So we need a new word for it. It’s more like looking through someone’s front window to watch their TV. So maybe call it “Peeking” instead of stealing?

Yes, I realise that it’s revenue they haven’t received but they would have only got it if the illegal streamer would have paid for it otherwise, which research shows is not the case in most situations. For example, if someone’s attempt to stream doesn’t work, how often do they then decide to pay for the match on Now TV instead? Almost never.

So it’s not exactly a victimless crime, but it’s not the same as stealing a bloomin car, is it?

Perhaps football needs to look to the music industry which had massive piracy problems a few years back. They were forced into a reasonable pricing model (Spotify, Amazon Unlimited, etc) and the problem didn’t exactly go away, but it was greatly reduced. Once the cost is less than the hassle of “Peeking”, then the problem mostly goes away.
Adonis Stevenson, AFC

Ed,

Further to my mail yesterday and in reply to Dave, Manchester.

You are almost correct in saying that context is everything. If you steal bread to feed your starving family the police would still want a word (it’s breaking the law after all) but judges have leeway on sentencing depending on context which I’m sure they exercise.

The difference with streaming is that no matter how important you think this is to you, however much of a proper football fan you are, football is not essential. In this country it is an overpriced luxury item, get used to it or take it up with the people who have the power to change it. If you don’t like it then get your kicks elsewhere, just stop taking what isn’t yours because you don’t want to pay for the shiny things.
Jim, Essex (still paying)

You guys are paying more than 50 pounds for your sky subscriptions without getting all the games??!! Here in India for our online streaming service, hotstar, I pay ₹365(approximately 4 pounds) a year for all prem games, bollywood releases and Cricket! And the premium package which costs around ₹1000(approx 10 pounds) includes all of that + all shows from HBO and other International movies and TV. Why the hell are you guys not using a VPN!
Sid LFC, India

Dear 365,

Thought I’d weigh in on the debate as to whether illegal streaming is stealing. The comparisons saying ‘you wouldn’t steal a car’ (I wouldn’t) are obviously misguided, but I’d say that even a comparison with Netflix ‘you pay to watch the Tiger King but not El Tigre’ is wide of the mark. I don’t claim any stake in or god given right to watch Netflix productions – they make them, I pay for them, I watch them. I couldn’t feel less of a connection to Joe Exotic (other than a powerful sexual one). Football is totally different – Sky and BT don’t really own football. I own football. In particular the right to watch Chelsea and England. I was taking penalties in the garden pretending to be Frank Leboeuf from the age of about 5. Iv played football on a regular basis to a regularly appalling standard all my life. I live and breathe football – no one else owns it; I own it. So the fact that it is even conceptually possible for someone to prevent me from watching / charge me to watch the team I support because they own the ‘commercial rights’ doesn’t just piss me off, it baffles me beyond comprehension. For the same reason, the idea that it is wrong to stream the team you support simply doesn’t register with me – of course I’m allowed to watch it, I have a better claim to watching this game than half the people in the stadium, let alone the holders of the IP rights. The legal definition of ‘theft’ is ‘the dishonest appropriation of property belonging to another with the intention of permanently depriving the other of it’ – how can streaming be stealing when football doesn’t really belong to the Premier League? When football doesn’t really belong to BT, Sky, or even premier league clubs as corporate entities? I own football, and I know that every fan feels the same way. In fact, I’d go further and say that Sky, BT et al. are stealing football from me – and every time I stream a game (all those minutes I spend trying to find the real ‘x’ to close a window and instead enter a semi-pornographic role playing game website), well that’s just me robin hooding the bastards who thought they could outsmart me into paying them.
Skinnyman CFC (#freeRichardKeys)