Over 600 web platforms for the ‘pirate’ broadcast of European matches have been blocked. The financial police of Rome, a special unit for the protection of privacy and technological fraud, has concluded an operation – called ‘Euro Strike 2020’ – to combat the phenomenon of audiovisual piracy through unauthorized transmission on the Internet, the so-called Iptv (Internet protocol television). The managers of the ‘pirate’ services risk imprisonment from six months to three years and a fine of up to 15,493 euros; while end users will automatically receive a significant administrative penalty for an amount up to € 1,032
The activity, explains a note, originated from Uefa which, as owner of the broadcasting rights of the event, signaled the proliferation of portals dedicated to the illegal streaming of matches near the start of the European football event. . The preliminary activities concerned the identification and accurate monitoring of illegal IPTV and streaming services and resources starting from the inaugural ceremony in Rome on 11 June last. A new articulated system based on latest generation IT platforms, powered simultaneously by numerous ‘content sources’ located in Europe and aimed at transforming copyrighted audio-video signals into data streams systematically redistributed in Europe, was unmasked. Worldwide. Singular is the circumstance that, after interrogating the individual IT resources, numerous returned the message ‘Xtream Codes Reborn’ on the browser, which returns to the well-known world pirate platform dismantled in 2019. Once the first investigative phase was completed, an innovative tracking system was configured which allowed to fully identify all the users of the pirate flows. On the occasion of yesterday’s schedule, June 17 (in Italy two matches were broadcast exclusively on Pay-TV), all connected users then suddenly displayed a panel on their devices that warned them that the site through which they were illegally staying viewing the program had been subjected to seizure and their connection data detected.
The complex and innovative investigation, coordinated by the prosecutor of the Republic of Naples, Giovanni Melillo and directed by the deputy prosecutor Vincenzo Piscitelli and by the deputy prosecutors Valeria Sico and Maria Sofia Cozza, therefore allowed the seizure and blackout of over 600 resources IT systems between transmission servers, management platforms, showcase sites and live streaming sites as well as the acquisition of the complete list of identification data of hundreds of thousands of illegal users worldwide.