Over the last twenty years Premier League teams have spent their TV wealth on a combination of acquiring legitimate overseas stars and paying premium prices for largely over-hyped and often under performing domestic players.

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"We face a very real risk of seeing the democratically accountable policing of computer-assisted crime replaced by a combination of vigilante action and the covert privatisation of legitimate investigation, " said Philip Virgo, Secretary General of EURIM, the all-party e-commerce lobby group which commissioned the study.

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The exact combination of diplomatic, economic, and military tools to be deployed toward this goal is a legitimate matter of debate.

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