Italian Police Dismantle €300 Million Streaming Piracy Network Affecting Major Platforms
Major Bust of Piracy Network in Italy
Overview of the Operation
ROME, May 22 (Reuters) - Italy's financial police said on Friday they had busted a sophisticated streaming piracy network that caused roughly €300 million ($348 million) in damages to rights holders such as Sky, DAZN, Netflix, Disney+ and Spotify.
Technology Behind the Piracy Network
The CINEMAGOAL Application
The operation targeted previously unseen technology built around an application called CINEMAGOAL, which connected users' devices to foreign servers that illegally decrypted streaming content, the Guardia di Finanza police said.
How the System Worked
Virtual machines operated around the clock on Italian soil, capturing and retransmitting access codes from legitimate subscriptions registered to fictitious account holders every three minutes, police added.
Bypassing Security and Subscription Offers
The system bypassed streaming platforms' security checks and did not require a connection directly associated with a specific IP address, making it harder to detect users. Subscriptions were offered for €40 to €130 per year.
International Cooperation and Enforcement
Seizure of Servers and Source Code
Prosecutors in Bologna, working with EU judicial cooperation body Eurojust, secured the seizure of foreign servers storing decryption data and the application's source code, with parallel operations carried out in France and Germany, police said.
Fines and Additional Illegal Devices
The Guardia di Finanza also uncovered the use of traditional illegal streaming devices, commonly known in Italy as "pezzotto", and will issue fines for 1,000 identified pirate system users ranging from €154 to €5,000.
Additional Information
($1 = 0.8616 euros)
(Reporting by Alvise Armellini; Editing by Alex Richardson)
