In full offensive against piracy, Italy has just knew one of the biggest blows to the illegal market. The State Police has dismantled a pirate IPTV network that had more than 900,000 users, in a operation baptized as Gotha.
The deployment, which has taken place in several regions of the country, exposes the real dimension of a clandestine business that moves millions of euros and that, for years, challenges the legal standard platforms and control agencies.
While thousands of subscribers have stayed overnight without access to their payment channels, the authorities remember that this type of services are not only illegal: they also compromise your safety, privacy and your personal data.
And, as in Spain, the pressure against these networks is already political, it is only enough to take a look at the strategy led by Javier Tebas from LaLiga, which has turned the fight against the IPTV into one of its priority fronts.
A large -scale operation against the Pirate IPTV
The Gotha operation It has been coordinated by the Italian authorities with interventions in more than twenty points of the country. There have confiscated servers, domains, encoders and transmission devices that were used to distribute, without authorization, content of platforms such as Sky.
It should be noted that researchers estimate that the network served almost 900,000 people, with monthly income that exceeded several million euros.
It was discovered that This type of networks work with sophisticated structurescapable of capturing premium signals and distributing them massively through the Internet. Everything, camouflaged on platforms that appear to be legitimate services and that, for a ridiculous price per month, promise unlimited access to illegal free soccer broadcasts, cinema or series.
Behind these pirate networks there is a very well structured model. They capture payment signals, redirect them through distributed servers and market them in the form of IPTV lists.
The end user access through specific applications OA through the well -known IPTV boxes and even from Amazon Fire TV Stick, which are small decoders that are widely extended in the gray market.
Its success lies in the usual: the price. For a subscription of just 5 or 10 euros per month, customers get access to packages that, in the legal market, can cost five or six times more. This has made, in Italy, about 23 % of the population – about 12 million people – use any of these platforms.
In Spain, according to data provided by LaLiga, the phenomenon is also worrying, and has led to implement blocks to the letter and real -time surveillance.
The risks of consuming IPTV Pirate
It is important to note that those who consume these services not only commit an infraction. They are also exposed to consequences that range from economic sanctions to computer vulnerabilities.
Many of these platforms are linked to networks that traffic with personal data, install malware or use insecure collection systems. The false appearance of normality in the interface does not guarantee any user protection.
In addition, the impact goes far beyond the consumer: legal platforms, content creators and operators that comply with regulations see their possibilities to compete. Therefore, organisms such as LaLiga insist that this battle is not only technique: it is also cultural and legal.
Mounting
Can IPTV piracy eradicate completely? The short answer is no, at least in the short term. These types of networks are resilient, fragment and reconfigure quickly. Closeing does not mean eliminating the problem, but it is difficult to hinder its operation and launch a clear message to users and distributors.
What is clear is that efforts must be coordinated, since surveillance, pressure to intermediaries, such as Cloudflare or Google, consumer education and that legal services have more competitive prices are needed. Without all that, the demand will continue to exist.
The closure of this pirate network is an important advance in the fight against piracy. The pressure will continue and examples such as that of Italy reinforce the path that is already being followed in Spain, with initiatives such as LaLiga to block illegal transmissions in real time.
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Tags: Piracy, IPTV