Across the globe, law enforcement and copyright holder groups are teaming up to tackle online piracy of all shapes and sizes.

Cooperation is seen as essential to tackling the endemic piracy problem and the key players regularly meet up to discuss progress and emerging problems.

Last week, Europol hosted its annual IP Crime Conference in Lisbon where stakeholders came together to exchange information and ideas. The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance was also present and seized the opportunity to announce its annual Anti-Piracy Award on stage.

The Anti-Piracy Award Goes to FIOD

The 2023 award goes to the Dutch fiscal police ( FIOD ), which shut down one of Europe’s largest IPTV operations in May. The illicit operation presumably offered its services to countless smaller IPTV sellers, together serving over a million subscribers according to official reports.

Large IPTV raids are not new, but this enforcement effort took place on a scale that we haven’t seen before. Information obtained by FIOD showed that the pirate IPTV operation was run from the GLOBE Datacenter in Den Helder, where more than 1,200 servers were taken offline.

The raids, which also inflicted some collateral damage , caused hundreds of thousands of screens to go dark. Several people were arrested and the prosecution is ongoing.

Commenting on the award, AAPA’s Executive Vice President Sheila Cassells notes that FIOD’s action shows how vital law enforcement efforts are against these types of illicit piracy operations.

“The scale of this operation illustrates clearly why law enforcement must continue to act against illegal IPTV services,” Cassells says .

“And the inclusion and closure of a major hosting provider reinforces the need for a clear and robust regulatory regime, including, for example, know your customer requirements, to be imposed on such actors,” she adds.

In recent years, illicit IPTV services have become a billion-dollar industry as people look for alternatives to costly official streaming subscriptions. AAPA and other copyright holders hope that by keeping the pressure on, this trend can eventually be reversed.

New ‘Host’ Anti-Piracy Award

AAPA also presented a new award this year for an agency operating in the conference’s host country, which is Portugal this year. This went to the General Inspection of Cultural Activities (IGAC), which helped to implement the country’s pirate site blocking framework.

The award was handed to General Inspector Luis Silveira Botelho and AAPA Co-President Mark Mulready hopes the Portuguese model will serve as an example for other countries.

“In presenting this award, we are pleased to acknowledge the steps taken in Portugal to implement an efficient and dynamic system for blocking orders,” Mulready says.

“We have seen from other countries how helpful such blocking orders can be and we hope that countries who have not yet introduced the possibility of blocking orders will take note of the system applied here,” he adds.

Anti-Piracy Commendations

The anti-piracy coalition also handed out a certificate of commendation to Marcin Cyganek of the Polish Central Bureau for Combating Cybercrime, who helped to prioritize IP crime and was instrumental in the shutdown of polsharing.com.

Certificates of commendation were also handed to Bulgaria, Italy, and Spain, for various enforcement actions. Bulgaria, for example, carried out a variety of anti-piracy operations in recent months, resulting in the shutdown of several widely-used piracy services.

Italy, meanwhile, was lauded for “ Operation Gotha “, which hit an unnamed IPTV operation that reportedly serviced 900,000 subscribers. This action took over where “ Operation Blackout ” left off and involved dozens of raids in 23 provinces across the country.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Following a request by the Office of the United States Trade Representative for stakeholders to identify so-called ‘notorious markets’ involved in large-scale infringement, submissions are now publicly available.

After reporting on submissions by the Motion Picture Association (MPA) ( 1 ) and Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) ( 2 ) this week, today we present a roundup of three key submissions, all of which target the pirate IPTV / live sports streaming ecosystem.

Anti-Piracy Coalitions, Members, Overlaps

Submissions by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), Football Association Premier League, plus a joint submission by beIN Media and Miramax, contain considerable detail on the problems faced by sports leagues and their broadcasting partners.

In some cases the nominated pirate services appear in more than one report. That’s not unexpected among companies in the same market but since some rightsholders are represented in more than one submission, for the sake of clarity those are shown in bold below.

AAPA members : Altice France, beIN Media Group , Canal+, Cosmote TV, CryptoGuard, Cyta, DAZN, DFL, Friend MTS, Irdeto, LeakID, LFP, Liberty Global, Nagra Kudelski, NOS, OPSEC, Premier League , Sky, Synamedia, United Media, Verimatrix, Viaccess Orca, Viaplay Group, Vodafone Ziggo, Wiley (S1)
Individual submission: Sole rightsholder Premier League (S2)
Joint submission: Miramax and beIN Media (S3)

Illicit IPTV Services

BestBuyIPTV heads the list of illicit IPTV services in the Premier League’s individual submission (S2).

“BestBuyIPTV is a very popular global IPTV service that carries channels from broadcasters located all around the world, including many that carry Premier League content. Investigations conducted by the Premier League have located the operator of the service in Vietnam.” (Premier League)

Forever TV (affiliates Chaloos and Mediastar ) takes the top spot in both the AAPA’s submission (S1) and the joint beIN/Miramax submission (S3). The IPTV service appears second in the Premier League’s report and is considered a major threat.

“The service operates from a website at https://foreveriptv.net/ where it offers subscriptions to its service as well as a re-streamer and re-seller program, which rewards third parties for further distribution of its pirated content.” (AAPA)

“These services between them are responsible for the unauthorized provision of thousands of premium TV channels and on-demand movies and TV content. Chaloos was named by the United States Trade Representative (‘USTR’) on its 2022 Notorious Markets List.” (Premier League)

Other IPTV services listed by the Premier League include the following (comments summarized):

EVPad: One of the most popular illicit streaming services across South East Asia. The business is extremely sophisticated. A product purchased on behalf of the Premier League was found to provide access to over 1,700 channels, including 75 offering live sports broadcasts. The operators have been very careful to hide their location and identities, Premier League links them to Hong Kong and China.

Family Box: Nominated in both Premier League and beIN/Miramax submissions. “Family Box is both a terrestrial pirate organization covering Kurdistan, and an IPTV pirate organization with global coverage. Its offices are in Erbil, Iraq,” beIN reports. Almost identical text appears in the Premier League’s individual submission, most likely since they’re both members of AAPA.

Globe IPTV: One of the most prominent wholesalers of content to pirate services around the world. Has supplied multiple pirate services that have been the subject of historical and ongoing legal action. Rightsholders have identified Globe’s operator in Lebanon.
(TF note: Globe was a supplier to Flawless TV. The roles were later reversed)

SVI Cloud: An illicit streaming device very popular in South East Asia. Operates both online and through an extensive list of resellers with over 70 physical locations listed as selling the device on their official website. (TF note: 17 people were arrested in Singapore early October and 2,500 devices seized. Follows a similar crackdown in Taiwan.)

Pirate Streaming Sites/Cyberlockers/Others

Both AAPA and Premier League have nominated web-based streaming sites to the USTR and in some cases the same platforms appear on both lists.

Livetv.sx , a popular sports stream indexing site, receives nominations from both, with the Premier League noting its availability in 12 different languages and an estimated 129 million global online visits since October 2022. The site is subject to Premier League blocking injunctions in multiple jurisdictions. AAPA believes the site is operated from Cyprus, Kazakhstan and/or Russia.

Freestreams-live1 receives a nomination from the Premier League. Previously the site operated from the domain freestreams-live1.com, but after that was seized by Homeland Security Investigations, freestreams-live1.tv became the site’s new domain.

Totalsportek (Poland), VIPBox (Germany), and Xoilac (Vietnam) were also reported by the Premier League.

LSHunter.net , Streamonsport , Rojadirecta , Soccerstreams.football , Totalsportek.pro , Filmmoviplex.com , RLSBB , Soap2day (variants), 1movieshd.com , Papadustream , Score808 , futemax.to , Pobretv.net , and YTS , were reported by AAPA.

We conclude with the AAPA’s cyberlocker and eBook nominations which include both Sci-Hub and Libgen due to publisher Wiley becoming an AAPA member.

The AAPA’s submission to the USTR is available here ( pdf )

The Premier League’s submission is available here ( pdf )

The beIN / Miramax submission is available here ( pdf )

———-

Other AAPA IPTV nominations not detailed above: GoGo IPTV , Apollo 5 , Yacine TV , Cobra TV , IPTV Smarty , IPTV Main , Bobres IPTV , SyberTV , Apollo Group TV , Xtreme HD , King IPTV , Orca IPTV , Dezor , META IPTV , 4KEVO IPTV , and XCTV IPTV .

(TF note1: AAPA reports that Cobra IPTV is “one of the most significant pirate IPTV services with worldwide popularity. TF note2: Sky obtained permission from the UK High Court in July to block IPTVMain’s servers . Others subject to blocking include BunnyStreams, GenIPTV, and GoTVMix)

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

As pirate set-top boxes, illegal IPTV services and infringement of live TV broadcasts remain key concerns for the audiovisual sector, the pressure is on to find more effective anti-piracy solutions.

Speaking with IBC last week, Sheila Cassells, Executive VP at the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance, warned that entertainment companies need to be very concerned about “any technological development” which can be used to access pirated content.

From the VCR to the iPhone, from Google Glass to today’s AI, being “very concerned” about new technology is the default position for major rightsholders and, in their position, many might feel the same. However, the focus of the conversation was on certain devices, referred to in the interview as “ISDs, Firesticks and Android apps” and their various abilities to facilitate piracy. What’s AAPA’s position there?

“At a basic level – and common to all the technical devices mentioned – AAPA would like to see the production, marketing and distribution of any device which can be used to infringe IP made illegal” – Sheila Cassells.

Careful What You Wish For

Given the vast experience of Cassells and the collective knowledge of AAPA’s members including Premier League, Sky, beIN, Canal+, and DAZN, we can assume that the statement above isn’t actually AAPA’s position, at least when taken literally. Nevertheless, it does raise some interesting questions.

Like many other people who spend too much time in front of a computer, the desk in front me here represents an Aladdin’s Cave of devices that can be used to infringe intellectual property rights. There’s a monitor that has the ability to show copyrighted images or display unlicensed movies, and is even big enough to be seen outside and generate liability for an unlicensed public performance.

There’s a vast collection of USB drives in various shapes and sizes, but only one where i’m 100% sure of the contents. In any event there must be a few terabytes of storage capacity, and all of it can be used to infringe IP rights; movies, TV shows, software, eBooks – literally nothing is safe.

As for the mobile phone, it’s an infringement machine. It has the ability to record movies in cinemas, store copies for retrieval, and then distribute them on the internet. No song is safe either; right out of the box it was able to infringe copyrights on every track ever made, in the entire history of music.

Can’t Ban All of the Things, All of the Time

The sobering truth is every tech gadget on the desk and most others in the rest of the house can be used to infringe intellectual property rights. Even the internet connection (or perhaps mostly the internet connection) can be used to infringe intellectual property rights, but it doesn’t necessarily follow that will be the use case.

So, after making a fairly basic but sensible case that there’s zero chance of making the production, marketing and distribution of ANY device which CAN be used to infringe IP made illegal, what does AAPA actually mean, and how can the problem be tackled?

In respect of the devices mentioned above (all set-top devices), Cassells references a piece of EU legislation known as the Conditional Access Directive . It dates back to 1998 and was crafted to protect TV platforms that provide content on a conditional basis, i.e customers get access to content on the condition they pay.

Complex Legislation, Boiled Down to Basics

The directive requires EU member states to prohibit an illicit device “which enables or facilitates without authority the circumvention of any technological measures designed to protect the remuneration of a legally provided service.” The directive also prohibits “all forms of advertising, direct marketing, sponsorship, sales promotion and public relations promoting such products and services.”

As is often the case in intellectual property matters, nearly everything here can be boiled down to one of the most important ingredients: intent.

If a device is designed to infringe IP rights, marketed to infringe IP rights, and infringes IP rights when in use, trying to claim the device is a neutral technology after the fact is unlikely to be successful.

Since Firesticks were mentioned, it’s clear they are not infringing by design, they aren’t marketed as such, nor do they infringe in any pre-determined way. As a result they are not illegal and cannot be described as such. However, they are absolutely capable of infringing IP rights so if some kind of middle man intervenes with software or other modifications designed to infringe IP rights, now the device is illegal, regardless of the intent of the original manufacturer.

Illegal Devices Are Already Illegal

If at this point we circle back to the beginning, there are obvious bright lines between ostensibly similar products when one is intended to infringe and the other is not.

The Filmspeler case in the Netherlands established illegality of devices when supplied configured to infringe so, logically, “the production, marketing and distribution of any device which can be used to infringe IP” is already illegal in the EU.

Cassells says that the sector is facing particular challenges tackling devices made in China because taking legal action there isn’t easy. The nature of these devices isn’t clear but if they’re designed, marketed or sold to infringe IP, the problem isn’t rendering them illegal.

In conclusion, this doesn’t sound like a problem in need of a new law. It sounds more like an enforcement issue, most likely preventing devices like these entering the EU, being distributed in the EU, and then sold in EU member states. Perhaps the only solution is to remove the incentive to buy them.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

Over the past decade, mobile applications have become the standard platform for most people to consume content online.

Whether it’s for shopping, news, or entertainment, there is an app available for any type of content.

This shift in consumption patterns is not limited to legal content; movie and TV piracy has gone mobile as well. In some cases, these pirate streaming apps can be found in official app stores, reaching an audience of millions of users.

The App Piracy Problem

Copyright holders are not happy with these ‘unauthorized’ apps, which are big business. In a recent publication by the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), NOS ‘ Head of Content Protection Pedro Bravo provides a detailed overview of the problem.

App piracy includes legitimate apps that are copied but we reserve our reporting to those that are advertised as a gateway to pirated content or live streams. While these apps lure users with free stuff, they don’t necessarily offer pirated content .

The ultimate goal of the developers is the same though. They want to convert users into a revenue stream, one way or another. Some apps may monetize user data, for example, but for the vast majority advertising is the income stream of choice.

Stealing Ad Dollars

That can be quite a lucrative business model and poses yet another problem for legitimate content creators. In addition to ‘stealing’ content, these pirate apps ‘steal’ their potential advertising revenue too.

“Ad words campaigns are the most lucrative for Pirates. Yes, not only are rights holders losing money from the lack of legitimate App downloads, but Pirates steal what should be their ad revenue as well,” Bravo notes.

In the past, some pirate sites and services have embraced the Robin Hood image, in the sense that they distribute content from wealthy corporations to the public at large. However, the AAPA piece notes that it is naïve to think that pirates are well-intended folk heroes.

“[Pirates] are not charities, handing out access to content to ease the economic pressures. Quite the opposite. Pirates are in it for the money. They are often large, international organizations spread across different jurisdictions, with IT infrastructure and sizeable resources.”

This sentiment is not new. While pirate sites and services exist in all shapes and forms, these operations have to make money; they wouldn’t survive otherwise. And for many shady piracy operations, money is the main driver, which can come at the expense of privacy or security.

How to Tackle Piracy Apps

The big question is how piracy apps can be tackled. Here, the AAPA article lists some concrete suggestions, starting with closer cooperation between rightsholders and the operators of app stores, such as Apple and Google.

These platforms already remove copyright-infringing apps if they’re reported but rightsholders say they could be more proactive, sharing research and information that can help to detect apps early on. For example, by pointing out known identifiers such as pirate logos and names, so associated apps can be recognized more easily.

This implies that app stores should do more than simply respond to takedown notices. On this front, Bravo suggests that it’s key to ensure that piracy apps don’t simply resurface. Verifying the identities of app publishers could be a good start.

“From an App Store perspective, implementing a robust process around the Digital Services Act ‘Know Your Business Customer’ could eliminate a lot of Pirate organizations slipping through.”

App stores could also collaborate with “trusted flaggers” to set up faster and more streamlined removal procedures while ensuring that repeat infringers are permanently banned.

Finally, proactive filtering might also go a long way to address app piracy. While hash filtering isn’t suited for unique apps, Apple and Google could use automated detection tools to flag piracy-related keywords, to spot potentially problematic content.

“Another way for App stores to remove Pirate Apps could be to leverage automatic detection, using defined keywords, such as Free IPTV or Free football, to highlight the illegal Apps quickly,” Bravo writes in his AAPA piece.

All in all, Bravo calls for more collaboration between stakeholders. That includes rightsholders, who can bundle their knowledge, but app stores also have a crucial role in solving the piracy puzzle.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

An awful lot has changed in the online piracy world over the last decade, but key fundamentals still underpin the entire ecosystem.

Many platforms depend on IP addresses, domain names, and a functioning DNS, but none can exist without some kind of hosting facility.

Numerous options are available, but service operators who value consistent uptime and a reduced chance of being linked to a piracy-facilitating server, tend to make their choices more carefully than others.

Offshore Hosting

One option is so-called ‘offshore hosting’ but what that actually means is open to interpretation. At a base level, it can mean that a server is based in a country that differs from that of the operator, but that in itself is nothing unusual.

When that second country has a lax attitude to infringement and when third, fourth or fifth countries enter the mix in various ways, ‘offshore hosting’ takes on a whole new character, one of particular interest to pirates hoping to stay both online and unidentified.

Of course, anything that helps pirates necessarily irritates those trying to stop them.

Internet Governance Forum – IGF 2022

The Internet Governance Forum ( IGF ) held this year’s meeting in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Under the overarching theme ‘ Resilient Internet for a Shared Sustainable and Common Future ‘ the event spanned five days from November 28, 2022, reportedly attracting more than one thousand speakers and visitors from 160+ countries.

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) and beIN Sports, who together hold a key interest in tackling pirate IPTV providers, presented at IGAF 2022. AAPA described itself as a group that “lobbies for better antipiracy legislation and enforcement” while building “private and public partnerships to achieve more efficient and effective enforcement.”

The AAPA/beIN presentation centered on the challenges of offshore hosting, and as the above image shows, multiple billion-dollar businesses are seeking solutions.

Legitimate use of an ASN or a Subterfuge?

“The hosting provider landscape continues to evolve and has become proliferated with companies using the term ‘offshore’ hosting,” the presentation’s introduction reads.

“AAPA aims to highlight that many of these companies have become synonymous with cybercrime activities. Promoting safety for illicit activities in the knowledge they do not have to comply with national or international laws.”

According to AAPA and member beIN, an offshore host is an entity that is likely to own no physical hardware itself while operating from “fake or questionable” headquarters in countries with poor intellectual property legislation.

AAPA further notes that offshore hosts lease IP addresses from outside ASN-registered territory , while operating servers in the UK, EU and US. This topic warrants an article in its own right but AAPA’s example – an operation with a RIPE ASN , headquarters in Hong Kong, Seychelles IP addresses, and rented servers in the Netherlands – suggests significant challenges.

DMCA Notices Are Ignored

Another claimed feature of offshore hosts is their tendency to absorb DMCA notices rather than do much about them. An AAPA slide provides an example of how this feature is marketed to potential customers, and while they don’t mention the service by name, it wasn’t difficult to find.

An operation known as Koddos is featured in the recent Counterfeiting and Piracy Watch List published by the European Commission. According to the report, it has “office locations in Hong Kong (China) and Seychelles. It is reported by rightholders to consistently ignore their takedown notices.”

So how do offshore hosting providers manage to deflect DMCA notices when other platforms are expected to respond to them quickly, or else? The answer to that its relatively straightforward once a few terms are understood.

DMCA > RIR > LIR > ASN > AS > Hosts

The internet is not just a network, it’s a network of networks. Some very large internet networks (or groups of networks) are given the label Autonomous System (AS) since they serve the same assigned IP addresses and share a common list of other Autonomous Systems to which they connect.

IANA , the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority, assigns an ASN (Autonomous System Number) to an AS so that it can be identified online. Cloudflare’s ‘ post office ‘ analogy explains the system perfectly.

“Imagine an AS as being like a town’s post office. Mail goes from post office to post office until it reaches the right town, and that town’s post office will then deliver the mail within that town. Similarly, data packets cross the Internet by hopping from AS to AS until they reach the AS that contains their destination Internet Protocol (IP) address. Routers within that AS send the packet to the IP address,” the company explains .

In respect of offshore hosts, AAPA’s example sees ‘Host Company 1’ applying for an ASN number via a Local Internet Registry (LIR), which in turn is a member of a Regional Internet Registry (RIR).

Once the ASN is assigned to Host Company 1, it shares the same ASN with Host Company 2, and Host Company 3….and Host Company 4. From there they work as a team, behind a single ASN, as AAPA’s presentation shows.

The real stinger here is that any DMCA notices have to be sent to the email addresses registered with the RIR and they have a tendency to go unanswered. Physical addresses registered to the companies are “fake or PO boxes” AAPA says, meaning that identifying who owns them can be difficult or even impossible.

From an enforcement perspective, that’s less than ideal. AAPA reports that during the first six months of the football season, only 10% of the DMCA notices sent to one offshore hosting company were actioned.

“There is no repeat infringer policy. Outreach is ignored and legal action cannot be taken because no one knows where this company is or who the owners are. One company hosts almost 50% of a broadcaster’s infringing streams,” AAPA’s presentation reads.

Whether anything can be achieved in the short term is unknown but by delivering its presentation and “call to action” at the Internet Governance Forum, which operates under a United Nations mandate ( pdf ) , the chances of connecting with powerful ears seems relatively high.

If nothing else, an anti-piracy group venturing this far into ‘enemy’ territory, seeking to disrupt ASNs rather than simple IP addresses, adds a new dimension to this evolving battle.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In recent years, many people have canceled their expensive cable subscriptions, opting to use cheaper Internet TV instead.

While there are plenty of legal streaming options available, there’s also a broad offer of IPTV services that are specifically set up to deliver content but without permission from rightsholders.

€1 Billion Pirate IPTV Revenue

These high-quality pirate IPTV services are often sold through monthly or yearly subscriptions. Over the years, this business model has transformed into an industry generating serious revenue. According to a new report, income surpassed €1 billion in Europe last year.

The research, commissioned Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), was carried out by the Centre for Intellectual Property, Policy & Management at Bournemouth University. It draws on data from rightsholders as well as the European Audiovisual Observatory, which produced a comparable study three years ago.

The new findings show a slight increase in IPTV service revenue compared to the previous study, from €941.7 million to €1.06 billion. The average spend on illegal IPTV subscriptions is now slightly more than 5 euros per month.

Interestingly, the number of Europeans (27 EU countries + UK) who use pirate IPTV services shows even more growth – 13.7m to 17.1m – an increase of around 25% in three years.

The fact that revenue grew slower can be explained by lower monthly subscription costs. Contrary to the prevailing inflation trend, pirate IPTV subscriptions have actually become cheaper.

Youth in the Lead

There are large differences in illegal IPTV service use between age cohorts. Most subscribers are younger, and among 16 to 24-year-olds, 11.8% have access to these unauthorized services.

The researchers note that piracy is a bigger draw for the youth as they generally have less money to spend. Younger generations are also more used to streaming content and generally have a more accepting attitude toward piracy.

“[D]ifferences are explained by not only a perception toward IP and piracy but also by other factors such as average income, internet use, and TV viewing habits that differ significantly between age groups.”

“Overall, young Europeans have a more tolerant attitude towards pirated online content,” the researchers add, referring to EU’s latest Intellectual Property and Youth Scoreboard published earlier in the year.

Geographical Differences

The scale of the IPTV problem varies from country to country. The Netherlands and Luxembourg have the highest percentage of pirate IPTV users, with 8.2% and 7.9% respectively. In Romania and Poland, it’s far less common with 0.8% and 1.5%.

In absolute numbers, the UK poses the biggest problem, with well over 3 million pirate IPTV users.

Germany and France are not far behind with 2.5 and 2.4 million users respectively. And while Luxembourg has one of the highest percentages of IPTV pirates, this translates to ‘only’ 37,561 users.

€3.2 Billion Lost Revenue

The report adds a new element by estimating the potential revenue that legal IPTV providers are losing due to widespread piracy. The estimate is based on legal subscription prices and the share of users who would be willing to pay for IPTV subscriptions.

This ‘willing to pay’ estimate is based on data supplied by AAPA members. This presumably assumes a fictitious scenario where pirate IPTV alternatives are not available. Based on these numbers the report estimates that legal pay-TV providers incurred a loss of €3.2 billion last year.

Commenting on the findings, AAPA’s Executive Vice President Sheila Cassells notes this loss also affects consumers because fewer profits lead to less investment into innovation and new content.

This talking point will also be communicated to lawmakers, as AAPA will use the report to lobby for more effective anti-piracy measures in Europe and elsewhere.

“In the face of current challenges, the efforts of AAPA are ever more required to promote efficient and effective legislation and intellectual property rights enforcement. This research acts as an information tool to raise awareness among European citizens, policymakers, law enforcement and the industry,” Cassells notes.

—

A copy of the AAPA full report titled “Illicit IPTV in Europe” can be found here

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

For stakeholders engaged in the perpetual fight against piracy, Europol’s IP Crime Conference offers networking opportunities by the truckload.

The 2022 event began Wednesday evening with a welcome reception in Rome, Italy. Thursday’s official opening ceremony began at 08:45 with a performance by the Guardia Di Finanza Fanfara, the official band of Itay’s financial police.

Given that the band’s GdF partners are responsible for taking down IPTV providers and sellers en masse , many in attendance would’ve appreciated the connections.

A Who’s Who of Anti-Piracy Groups

After two years of online meetings, this year’s event sees companies and industry groups fly in from all over the world, with entities fighting IPTV piracy represented comprehensively.

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment and their partners in the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance are both in attendance. And then there’s the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit, Sky Italia, Eurojust, FAPAV, INTERPOL, Motion Picture Association, NAGRA Kudelski and Nordic Content Protection. Even U.S. Homeland Security Investigations and the U.S. Department of Justice made the trip.

The key themes of the conference are based on two questions: 1) How do we bring down criminal networks that are exploiting times of crisis to infringe IP Rights? 2) How can public-private partnership enhance the fight against IP Crime?

Public-private partnerships in IPR enforcement are nothing new but over the last few years, some rightsholder groups have become physically embedded inside government law enforcement agencies. The lines between civil and criminal enforcement are clear in law but much less obvious during investigations and on matters such as intelligence sharing, at least to outsiders.

The benefits of collaboration are obvious, however. The private sector has exceptional investigation tools, dedicated experts, and profit-driven motivation. On the other, law enforcement entities have superior access to restricted information and the not-insignificant power of arrest. When everything goes to plan, big things can follow.

Private-Public In Action

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) is a company incorporated in the UK . Run by former policeman and current Irdeto cybersecurity expert Mark Mulready, AAPA represents the companies and groups listed below.

It’s clear why AAPA is considered one of pirate IPTV’s most significant rivals but when enforcement is escalated to the next level, government agencies have access to new sets of tools. There are numerous examples of this paying off but for AAPA, three events stand out in particular.

And the Winner Is…..

During the opening day of the conference, AAPA announced the winner of its 2022 award. It went to the Cybercrime Department of the Bulgarian Directorate Combating Organized Crime for its lead in implementing the EMPACT priority on intellectual property crime.

EMPACT – the European Multi-Disciplinary Platform Against Criminal Threats – is the main mechanism for prioritizing threats and organizing an operational response in the EU. The 2022-2025 EMPACT cycle renders intellectual property crime an EU priority and with early recognition for Bulgaria’s cybercrime unit, the stage may have been set for new operations similar to these ( 1 , 2 , 3 ).

“The award was presented to Inspector Alexander Velev for his work in leading the operational action concerning illegal IPTV and illegal streaming in the framework of the EMPACT priority,” AAPA’s announcement reads.

“The effectiveness of collaborative working is clear to see and is evidenced by the fact that AAPA was invited to produce and deliver a 3 -day technical based training event which was hosted by the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior in Sofia,” says Sheila Cassells, Executive Vice President of AAPA.

Conference Co-Hosts Take Both ‘Highly Commended’ Awards

A pair of AAPA ‘highly commended’ awards were presented to Nucleo di Polizia Economico-Finanziaria della Guardia di Finanza di Milano and Squadra Reati Informatici della Procura della Repubblica presso il Tribunale Ordinario di Milano .

Featuring local and state police with support from the judiciary, these financial crime units are behind ‘The Net’, an anti-IPTV operation that began in December 2020 and claimed a number of high-profile victories before its completion in January 2022.

“We are delighted to recognise the continued commitment of the Italian police to fighting IP crime for a second year. The scale of the illegal network which was broken up as a result of THE NET is another successful blow against pirates,” Cassells says.

Those in attendance appear primed to deliver many more.

Image credit: Pixabay/ Quince Creative

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.