European strike against streaming network: 560 suppliers offline
One of the world's largest streaming networks has been smashed in a pan-European police operation. It had provided over 22 million users with films, series and sports broadcasts, some of them illegally protected by copyright.
As part of "Operation Taken Down", police authorities from nine European countries - including Switzerland - have dismantled a network of streaming and IPTV providers. This was reported by the European police authority Europol. The provider was based and active both in the EU and in other parts of the world. In total, its customers included over 22 million users on various platforms.
Source: licdn.com
As Europol announced, they are investigating a total of 102 suspects. Eleven of them have already been arrested. They are alleged to have distributed copyrighted content online. The material was made available to customers via their own streaming services and more than 500 IPTV resellers.
Rich haul during house search
As part of the investigation, the authorities carried out 112 house searches and confiscated drugs, weapons, around 100 domains, 29 servers and 270 other devices. They also found 40,000 euros in cash and crypto assets totalling 1.6 million euros.
According to the Italian police's media release, the network took in around 250 million euros per month. In addition to regular TV programmes, pay TV and live TV content such as Sky, Dazn, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Disney+ and Paramount were available.
Neither the Italian nor the European police authorities provided any information about which streaming websites or IPTV resellers exactly belong to the network that was taken down. They also did not name any domains. In total, around 560 resellers are now no longer able to offer this service.
In addition to the Swiss police, authorities from Bulgaria, Croatia, France, Germany, the Netherlands, Sweden, Romania and the United Kingdom were also involved in the operation.
I've been tinkering with digital networks ever since I found out how to activate both telephone channels on the ISDN card for greater bandwidth. As for the analogue variety, I've been doing that since I learned to talk. Though Winterthur is my adoptive home city, my heart still bleeds red and blue.