NATIONAL POLICE IN Spain, Denmark and Europol have cracked an illegal international IPTV streaming business spanning 30 countries.
According to a report in Broadband TV News, raids in 14 locations resulted in the arrests of five individuals for crimes of belonging to a criminal organisation, intellectual property theft, fraud and money laundering.
Initiated by the Premier League in 2015, the investigation uncovered a complex international technological infrastructure underpinning the illegal IPTV business, including 11 server farms distributed all over the world, some of them with more than 44 servers. The illegal service allowed access to more than 800 television channels to subscribers in more than 30 countries, for subscriptions starting at €40 (approximately $61 CDN) per month.
“The success of this investigation is a further example of the Premier League’s hugely impactful global anti-piracy programme”, said Premier League director of legal services Kevin Plumb, in the report. “We are achieving unprecedented success in the protection of our media rights, with ground-breaking Court orders blocking illegal streams and numerous actions against suppliers of illegal Premier League content resulting in significant prison sentences.”
