Europe-wide raids on online piracy

ROME - Italian authorities last week launched a major anti-piracy operation against an illegal video-streaming platform, which included raids across the country and in five other European countries.

Coordinated by prosecutors in Naples, financial police targeted and dismantled the Xtream Codes streaming platform, designed by two Greek citizens and attracting more than 5 million users in Italy alone, according to a police statement.

The platform illegally offered content copyrighted by Italian channels Sky Italy and Mediaset, and by Netflix, Infinity, and Dazn streaming content valued at an estimated 60 million euros ($66.3 million) per year, the police said.

"The members of the organization arranged and managed suitable IT spaces from abroad, and through them they rebroadcast the signals on a large scale, including in Italy," they explained.

In Italy, the commercial network, which acquired the content resold them to final customers (for as low as 12 euros per month), had major bases in the northern regions of Lombardy and Veneto, and in southern Campania, Puglia, Calabria and Sicily.

Some 25 premises and offices were raided, and 197 financial accounts seized in the country.

At the same time, Italian authorities explained, "eight European investigation orders issued by the Naples prosecution office... were simultaneously conducted in the Netherlands, France, Greece, Germany and Bulgaria", in collaboration with the European Union agencies for investigation and judicial coordination, Europol and Eurojust, and respective national police forces.

Overall, the European-wide operation targeted three companies and five people, whose names were not immediately disclosed.

Police only said the suspects "responsible for the organization "were being prosecuted for criminal association aimed at the illicit reproduction and marketing of internet protocol television, aggravated by transnational crime.

Yet, they did not specify whether orders of arrest had been issued last week.

In addition to the seizure of the entire Xtream Codes platform, a further 80 websites and 183 servers connected with the reproduction and spreading of the video content were confiscated.

When raided, such websites and servers were connecting to about 700,000 online users, police added.

Italian final customers of Xtream Codes streaming would be located and possibly put under investigation, according to the chief of the financial police's Special Unit for the Protection of Privacy and Technological Fraud.

"It must be clear that (subscribing to illegal streaming services) is also a crime, which includes the risk of jail conviction from six months to three years, and a fine worth 2,500 to 25,000 euros," Colonel Giovanni Reccia told reporters at a news conference later.

Xinhua News Agency

(China Daily 09/26/2019 page17)