In our society, thousands of people purchase “pirate” services in order to watch different channels (sports, series, films…) for a highly reduced rate compared to the price of the official providers. Many of these services are starting to face legal issues.
These IPTV (Internet Protocol Services or television over the Internet) services can be purchased through the official service provider or through unofficial channels that promote these contents to their subscribers (sheltered by broadcasting rights).
In recent months, the authorities have arrested the managers of some of these illegal IPTV platforms, and in countries like Italy or Spain, these activities are strongly prosecuted.
To this effect, a few days ago the Unit of Intellectual Property Crimes has been ordered to close down XTREAM-CODES platform which distributed 80% of the illegal content of Italy, and it is now starting to investigate the users of these services. According to the current legislation in force, the penalties are not limited to the pirate content broadcasters or the managers of the platforms, but also affect the people using these services.
So far, over 1800 users have been accused, and they will have to face the corresponding economic sanctions, and possibly also to appear in court.
It is remarkable that one of the distributors is a gentleman of 70 years of age who was using the platforms TVSStreamingItalia and IPTVPanamaCity to offer channel packages illegally offering the content of Mediaset Premium, Sky, Disney+ and DAZN. The benefits exceeded € 500,000.
The users contacted with this distributor and the MAC addresses of their devices were registered in order to allow Access to the channels. The payment was made by bank transfer or by topping up prepaid cards, and thanks to this it was easier to locate and report the users. The users had already been given a warning that these actions were not legal in Italy.
The total sanctions they can face are up to € 300,000.
To avoid these kinds of problems, it is necessary to check the current legislation in force in each country before acquiring these services since these always leave a trace in the web.
From Grupo Telecable we would like to remind you that pirate IPTV platforms, in addition to not being and legal and using these can be considered a crime according to the Spanish and to the European law, these can also be a source of computer viruses, device hacking or personal data theft. We all should take extreme precaution with these portals or sites.
