Police and Guardia di Finanza have concluded an investigation that led to the closure of 114 pirate sites. Here’s what happened
The fight against piracy by the Italian authorities continues unabated. Contrast activities aimed at preventing the diffusion of pirated content protected by copyright, as well as to hit the huge business that revolves around this illegal phenomenon. The economic-financial police nucleus of Brescia, together with the special nucleus for the protection of privacy and technological frauds of the Guardia di Finanza of Rome and with the coordination of the prosecutor’s office of Brescia, identified and blocked 114 websites that illegally offered a series of live sporting events, films and TV series protected by copyright.
Operation “Free football”
“Free football”, this is the name of the operation developed by the authorities and that led to the closure of 114 websites that illegally transmitted video content. The operation of the Police and the Guardia di Finanza has ascertained that the pirated contents were transmitted both in live streaming and in streaming on demand, in particular for soccer matches, but also for films and TV series. Transmissions that, obviously, took place without any kind of legal and economic agreement with the legitimate owner of the television rights. The incriminated websites were organized in real palimpsests easily accessible to the users to facilitate in a clear and simple way the choice of the preferred program.
Online piracy: increasing phenomenon
A research carried out by the Federation for the Protection of Audiovisual and Multimedia Contents showed that in 2018 the incidence of the audiovisual piracy phenomenon in Italy was around 33% with movies as the preferred content by the adult population, 21% TV series and 20% TV programs.
Also in 2018, there was a surge in piracy of live sporting events with nearly 5 million Italians claiming to have illegally watched live streaming sports content on their devices such as computers, tablets, smartphones, smart TVs or at friends and family over the course of the year. Over 22 million acts of sports piracy were estimated in 2019 with events dedicated to soccer, Formula 1 and MotoGP.