A business led by Europol, involving police forces from Cyprus, Greece, Bulgaria and the Netherlands, targeted one of IPTV's largest piracy companies in the world.
At least three people were arrested, and servers were seized in Bulgaria and the Netherlands that supplied content to around 500.000 subscribers worldwide, with annual revenues that, according to the authorities, amounted to about five million euros.
Live TV or IPTV offers access in content but is an extremely expensive proposition, since traditional monopolies require large subscriptions. IPTV offers the well-known to all of us application Kodi with various additives.
So there are pirated IPTVs, which provide thousands of different subscription channels for a few bucks, euros or pounds a month.
This week, however, police forces across Europe have been tuned to hit one of the largest IPTV illegal companies in the world, Torrentfreak says. The survey was launched last February by IPTV and coordinated actions took place on Tuesday in Cyprus, Bulgaria, Greece and the Netherlands.
Three suspects were arrested in Cyprus, two in Limassol (aged 43 and 44) and one in Larnaca (age53 years old). All are alleged to be part of an international ring that illegally broadcast around 1.200 channels of pirated content worldwide.
According to initial reports, its range services IPTV offered by the network was huge. The illegal ring reportedly had more than 500.000 subscribers, each of whom paid around 10 euros a month.
Police authorities, under the guidance of Europol, have carried out at least nine raids worldwide.
The main servers of the IPTV service were located in Petrich, a small town in Blagoevgrad province of southwest Bulgaria.
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