The fight against audiovisual piracy continues. In the last hours the Economic and Financial Police Unit of the Milan Finance Police has made several research throughout the national territory as part of the so-called “operationThe Internet“contrary to the phenomenon of audiovisual piracy perpetrated via IPTV.
Investigations by the Milan public prosecutor’s office have identified and blocked a series of new accesses to digital platforms that allowed illegal use of television content through the IPTV system, used by more than 500,000 users. Investigations revealed that the asking price to watch all content from major paid streaming platforms such as SKY, DAZN and Netflix with a single “illegal subscription” was around 10 euros.
The searches led to the dismantling of a complex technological infrastructure, operating on a national scale, responsible for the illegal distribution of encrypted PayTV signals via the Internet. During the operation, they were globally the homes of twenty subjects residing in Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna, Campania and Calabria were searched, which in various capacities provided for the generation and distribution of illegal IPTV streams. The people involved are accused of copyright infringement.
Specifically, in Campania, the administrator of a structure called CyberGroup has been identified, well known in the “world” of piracy: it is a real Internet Service Provider whose servers allowed various illegal IPTV to operate; in the same region there was also another subject, responsible for procuring and managing payments relating to pirated subscriptions to the SKY service, intended to fuel illicit financial flows. Finally, in Tuscany, another suspect, using more than 50 mobile devices, illegally distributed audiovisual content from the SKY programme, allowing users to view it without paying the due license fee.
Comments of appreciation for the operation came from many quarters, including SKY. “The Guardia di Finanza has the full support of SKY in its fight against audiovisual piracy and we welcome today’s operation, the latest in a series of increasingly effective actions aimed at ending this illegal phenomenon. Audiovisual piracy not only funds organized crime and negatively affects creative industries, but also carries real risks for end users.” We talked about these aspects in these two articles: