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      ‘Digital TV’ Raided By Cybercrime Unit Following DirecTV IPTV Piracy Complaint

      news.movim.eu / TorrentFreak · Friday, 21 July, 2023 - 18:06 · 4 minutes

    digital tv In January 2023, the Alliance Against Pay Television Piracy ( Allianz ) welcomed Jorge Bacaloni as the organization’s new president.

    Bacaloni is also the Regional Anti-Piracy Manager of Vrio Corp, a company comprised of DirecTV Latin America and Sky Brasil, among others. In an interview following his appointment, the anti-piracy chief stressed that public/private partnerships are a necessity in the fight against piracy.

    “It is necessary for the entire industry to accept that this is a challenge for everyone and to work in coordination,” he said .

    “Alianza has a very important role, but it cannot fight a huge criminal network alone, one that is growing by leaps and bounds, hand in hand with technological advances. That is why we believe that governments, in addition to creating favorable conditions for the private sector to create value, must carry out concrete actions to provide legal certainty.”

    Precisely when DirecTV’s anti-piracy team filed its complaint with the authorities in Argentina isn’t clear, but it appears the type of cooperation Bacaloni called for again in June is already producing results.

    Specialist Prosecutor Launches Investigation

    DirecTV’s complaint focused on Digital TV, a pirate IPTV service offering around 900 live TV channels, including channels exclusive to the company in Latin America. Digital TV also had a sizeable VOD platform, 8,000 movies and 400 TV series, DirecTV reports. To round off the package, Digital TV reportedly offered live soccer and adult channels as part of a low-cost subscription deal.

    Under the control of specialist cybercrime prosecutor Alejandro Musso in Buenos Aires, the investigation was carried out by Argentina’s Specialized Fiscal Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrimes ( UFECI ) with assistance from fraud investigators at online marketplace operator Mercado Libre.

    Raids Against Pirate IPTV Provider ‘Digital TV’

    After receiving authorization from a local court, law enforcement carried out raids in the Buenos Aires Province town of Ramos Mejía, and the cities of Arrecifes and Chivilcoy.

    “A 22-year-old man, a computer technician with extensive knowledge of programming, was arrested in Ramos Mejía and brought to justice after being accused of being the creator of ‘Digital TV’, a platform that was used for the illegal retransmission of television signals,” a statement from DirecTV reads.

    Image of the raid issued by police digital tv raid1

    The company says that according to a preliminary inspection, the service had around 85,000 subscribers. An app associated with the service, available for download from “one of the main virtual stores” is said to have been downloaded over 100,000 times.

    “The Court ordered [the app’s] immediate blocking given the million-dollar losses suffered by rightsholders due to the action of piracy,” DirecTV adds.

    TorrentFreak found an app fitting that description on Google Play .

    At the time of writing the app remains available on Google Play from Argentinian and overseas IP addresses. The same is true for what appears to be one of Digital TV’s websites .

    TorrentFreak was independently able to link the app on Google Play directly with the website, and then link both to the developer arrested by police.

    Police Traced “Mastermind” Via IP Addresses

    Local media outlet La Nacion published police photographs of the suspect and identified him as local man Martin Coll, the alleged “mastermind” behind DigitalTV and just one of the players involved in TV piracy across Latin America.

    “The suspect is part of one of the organizations that operates throughout Latin America, it is a million-dollar business that generates large losses for the affected companies,” a police source said.

    Police-issued photo of Digital TV suspect digitaltv-suspect

    La Nacion reported that police were able to identify Coll by tracking the IP addresses he used online. While that evidence would indeed prove useful as part of a larger package, we were able to discover the name of the “mastermind” within five minutes of downloading the Digital TV Android app from Google Play.

    Whether it was a blunder or misplaced overconfidence is unclear, but the Digital TV app contains an abundance of useful information. In terms of personally identifying information, the certificates are particularly informative since they carry the developer’s full name.

    Among other highly sensitive pieces of information, the app links to an API at the domain DigitalTV.cloud. Other than a default server landing page there’s no public-facing website at that address, but one does exist at another URL .

    The servers indicated behind the scenes clearly formed an important part of Digital TV’s infrastructure and the authorities are obviously well aware of that since the domain is now linked to an ISP blocking notice.

    As noted earlier, Coll’s anonymity was completely removed when local media published his full name and photographs, which included images of the suspect in handcuffs following his arrest. Whether that’s normal for Argentinan media is unclear but whatever the truth, local TV channel Canal26 went on to broadcast images of the suspect to 4.5 million subscribers all around the country.

    When that genie escapes from the bottle, there’s no hope of returning it. In the meantime, reports suggest the developer is refusing to answer any questions. Two other men said to be resellers of the service have reportedly been identified by the authorities.

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

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      DirecTV puts Newsmax back on the air after Republicans’ angry protests

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 22 March, 2023 - 16:42

    A large Newsmax logo on a booth on a conference floor.

    Enlarge / Newsmax logo displayed at the National Rifle Association's annual meeting in Houston, Texas on May 28, 2022. (credit: Getty Images | Patrick T. Fallon)

    Two months after dumping Newsmax instead of paying a new fee, DirecTV has reached a deal to put the conservative news network back in the satellite provider's channel lineup.

    Newsmax had waged an aggressive public relations campaign against DirecTV. "This is a blatant act of political discrimination and censorship against Newsmax," Newsmax CEO Christopher Ruddy said on January 25 in an article on the network's website .

    Newsmax changed its tune today when announcing the deal that will put Newsmax back on DirecTV starting tomorrow. "While we raised the issue of censorship relating to our removal, we now believe in DirecTV's commitment to distributing diverse viewpoints, including conservative ones," Newsmax said in a statement provided to Ars.

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      DirecTV dumps Newsmax instead of paying new fee, drawing Republican outrage

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Wednesday, 25 January, 2023 - 19:20

    Two men sit in front of a TV that displays only static.

    Enlarge

    Newsmax is no longer on DirecTV, as the satellite video provider today said it decided not to renew an expiring deal because of Newsmax's money demands.

    "On multiple occasions, we made it clear to Newsmax that we wanted to continue to offer the network, but ultimately Newsmax's demands for rate increases would have led to significantly higher costs that we would have to pass on to our broad customer base," DirecTV said in a statement provided to Ars. (AT&T owns 70 percent of DirecTV.)

    The carriage deal expired at midnight last night. The "rate increase" demanded by Newsmax was actually from a base of $0 because DirecTV didn't have to pay Newsmax to carry the network under their now-expired deal, a DirecTV spokesperson told Ars. DirecTV says it was one of the first pay-TV providers to carry Newsmax starting in 2014.

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      OAN loses key ruling in suit claiming DirecTV broke deal by dropping network

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 16 January, 2023 - 19:56

    One America News website displayed on a phone screen. A DirecTV logo is seen in the background.

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    One America News Network's owner lost a key ruling in a lawsuit against DirecTV over the TV provider's decision to drop OAN from its channel lineup. OAN-owner Herring Networks had sued DirecTV and its owner AT&T in March 2022 , claiming breach of contract.

    The lawsuit always seemed like an uphill battle for Herring Networks because DirecTV didn't take OAN off the air while they still had a carriage agreement. Instead, DirecTV waited until the carriage agreement expired and chose not to renew it.

    Most of OAN's claims were thrown out in a ruling issued last week by Judge John Meyer of California Superior Court in San Diego County. DirecTV had filed an anti-SLAPP (strategic lawsuits against public participation) motion to strike the Herring Networks complaint; DirecTV's motion was granted in part and denied in part.

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