The soldiers of the Provincial Command of Milan Financial Policecoordinated by the local Public Prosecutor’s Office, conducted an important investigation to combat the phenomenon of audiovisual piracythe so-called “IPTV” – Internet Protocol Televisioncarried out through the unauthorized transmission of protected content over the Internet.
In conjunction with the European football championships 2024the Fiamme Gialle performed 14 local and IT searches throughout the national territory against 13 suspects, resident in various Italian regions and abroad, all accused of managing illegal distribution networks of the major television schedules protected by copyright, illegally decrypting and redistributing the contents of the most important World television players via platforms Unauthorized IPTVcausing significant economic harm to legitimate broadcasters.
It was then signal transmission obscured preventing access to content to over 1.3 million users.
The investigations, conducted by a team of military personnel from the Milan Economic-Financial Police Unithighly qualified in the fight against AI computer crimescoordinated by the local Public Prosecutor’s Office, arose from a complaint by SKY ITALY; the suspects operated in a completely innovative way compared to the past, that is, throughexfiltration of decryption keysnecessary for the decryption and “unencrypted” viewing of all the channels and television schedules of the main and most important broadcasters which then, through the use of virtual servershosted at national and foreign internet service providerswere disclosed and intended for individual users of the Illegal IPTVs.
“We thank the Milan Provincial Command of the Guardia di Finanza for this important anti-piracy operation. Countering this criminal phenomenon is a commitment that involves us all and the work of the police is fundamental to protect the audiovisual industry and the millions of subscribers who choose legality”, comment Andrea Duilio, CEO of Sky Italia.
The investigative activity, made more complex by the use of systems VPN (Virtual Private Network) For anonymize communications, ended with the identification of 13 people suspected of the crime envisaged by the art. 171 ter of the Copyright lawas well as Illegal access to computer systems And possession of access codes And Computer fraud and theblocking of pirate siteswhile further investigations are underway in order to fully identify the individual users who are recipients of theIllegal IPTV.
The investigations carried out by Financial Police in contrast to the multifaceted types of piracy, they are part of the broader device that the Corps puts in place on a daily basis to monitor the economic and financial legality of the country. There violation of intellectual property rights constitutes, in fact, an extremely lucrative illicit activity for criminal organizations, while generating considerable damage to thelegal economyfor the distortion of competition and for the conspicuous tax evasion generated by this widespread illicit traffic.
