Its no news now that the traffic on streaming platforms has peaked during this corona lockdown, but not everyone uses paid sources to watch movies and listen to songs.
Due to the increase in demand for video content during this period piracy has surged, as per our independent research we found that piracy had reached record-high levels during the pandemic.
And it is this fact that has woken up authorities around the world to manage and protect copyrights and diminish piracy.
Regulatory authorities in Spain, Denmark, Sweden, and Germany have captured 11 suspects for selling illegal streaming rights to get over 40,000 streaming services, subscription-based tv channels and movies, damaging multiple media copyrights on a grand scale.
Amid the crackdown day facilitated by Eurojust, 50 servers were taken down in France, Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium, Denmark, Sweden, the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain, through which an evaluated 2 million subscribers around the world were watching shows and movies illegally, for example from, Netflix, Amazon, and HBO.
In a comparable case previous September, Eurojust facilitated a major activity that driven to the takedown of more than 200 servers.
In addition to the captures of the criminals, 15 places were searched including one property, luxury cars, and gems, cash and crypto-currencies have been seized adding up to an estimated amount of around EUR 4.8 million.
Another EUR 1.1 million has been seized in different bank accounts. The assessed procedures for the suspects are said to be at the slightest EUR 15 million. Europol provided intellectual and analytical support to organize this crackdown.
New major crackdown on audiovisual #piracy: #Eurojust coordinated operation blocking illegal streaming of 40 000 TV channels and films, 11 arrests in Spain, Germany, Sweden and Denmark, 50 servers seized, including in The Netherlands: https://t.co/OzhtMGxK2n #JusticeDone #IPR pic.twitter.com/BmhphlcdzX
— Eurojust (@Eurojust) June 10, 2020
The group began its operations in 2014. The criminal organization received payments by means of PayPal, bank transfers, and cryptocurrencies, with servers for the transaction in Poland.
The previous year investigations were opened by Spanish authorities, initially looking into both the illegal sale of broadcasts of sports events by means of pay-tv and money laundering. After that, the investigations were expanded to a much more extensive scope of illegal online access to pay-TV services.
In Sweden, a criminal examination has been going on since 2017, focusing on illegal administrations in the Swedish market.
