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Uefa, European football's governing body, has attacked file-sharing websites YouTube and Flickr for failing to prevent fans from uploading footage of games.
Alexandre Fourtoy, chief executive of Uefa Media Technologies, compared football's piracy problem to that of the film and music industries, warning that it could harm the game.
Speaking at Uefa's international broadcast centre in Vienna, Fourtoy said: "Piracy is a big problem. There are pirates who steal content to build up a business of their own and we act against them all."
Technology has made it easy for fans attending matches to film the action on digital cameras or mobile phones.
But Fourtoy warned them against sharing the footage on sites such as YouTube.
He said: "If it is to show your wife, that's fine. If it's to set up a website and make a business, you'll end up in jail. The problem [with] these websites is that they don't educate their users."
Head of content David Farrelly said: "If we see things damaging the image of the competition we will act accordingly."
He said that YouTube was aware of the problem.
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