Italian financial police announced on Friday that they have dismantled a sophisticated streaming piracy network, which caused approximately €300 million ($348 million) in damages to major rights holders including Sky, DAZN, Netflix, Disney+, and Spotify.
Operation Details
The operation targeted a previously unseen technology built around an application called CINEMAGOAL. This app connected users' devices to foreign servers that illegally decrypted streaming content, according to the Guardia di Finanza police force.
Virtual machines operated around the clock on Italian soil, capturing and retransmitting access codes from legitimate subscriptions registered to fictitious account holders every three minutes, police added.
Bypassing Security Checks
The system bypassed streaming platforms' security checks and did not require a connection directly associated with a specific IP address, making it harder to detect users. Subscriptions were offered for €40 to €130 per year.
International Cooperation
Prosecutors in Bologna, working with EU judicial cooperation body Eurojust, secured the seizure of foreign servers storing decryption data and the application's source code. Parallel operations were carried out in France and Germany, police said.
Traditional Piracy Devices
The Guardia di Finanza also uncovered the use of traditional illegal streaming devices, commonly known in Italy as "pezzotto". Authorities will issue fines for 1,000 identified pirate system users, ranging from €154 to €5,000.
