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Pirate IPTV Reseller Who Made Millions of Euros Sent to Prison For Eight Years
A court in Greece has handed down one of the most punishing sentences on record to a man who resold pirate IPTV subscriptions. The Court of Thessaloniki heard that the local man sold subscriptions to thousands of customers, generating millions of euros. After the court sent him to prison for eight years, attention now turns to a seized customer database. The authorities are said to be preparing cases against customers, some of whom have already been arrested.
Like many of its European counterparts, Greece has a pirate site blocking program that receives regular updates through an administrative process.
The first domains blocked by Greek ISPs (xrysoi.online, xrysoi.se and xrysoi.eu) were restricted in 2018 and the most recent (antenasports.ru, sporthd.me) were blocked this August, to a total of 655 domains in roughly six years. Greece also regularly blocks IP addresses, mostly to restrict access to pirate IPTV services, especially those providing access to live football.
The most recent order dated September 3, 2024, requested blocking of just five IP addresses and from data made available as part of the country’s administrative program, just 111 IP addresses are currently blocked overall.
Whether that’s the full extent of blocking is unclear, but it appears that 100% of the ‘pirate’ IP addresses are outside Greece itself, mostly in other European countries.
When compared to neighboring Italy’s regime, blocking in Greece is fairly mild. In general, the government has been accused of not taking the pirate IPTV threat seriously enough. On that front there are clear signs of change and in a case that came to a close last week, the judiciary showed that things can end very badly for IPTV pirates.
Pirate IPTV Reseller Feels Full Wrath of the Law
A number of IPTV providers causing the most headaches right now are based outside Europe and as such, are difficult to counter. ISP blocking is one of the responses to that, but there are other options too, especially targeting so-called resellers. In a nutshell, these people buy subscriptions from IPTV providers at a lower rate than the public so are in a position to make a profit when selling them on.
Because they tend to operate locally in their own markets, often as part of a wider but not necessarily integrated network, to degree resellers offer a single point of contact for IPTV providers. At the same time, resellers service tens, dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of their own customers, which on one hand can return very good profits but on the other, directly exposes resellers to law enforcement.
Last week at the Court of Thessaloniki, a case involving a local IPTV reseller came to a head. The Court heard that the reseller had been in business for years, on a scale and scope rarely seen in these types of cases.
Selling monthly IPTV subscription packages to members of the public over several years, the man reportedly serviced a customer base of several thousand people, many based in Greece, but also some overseas. Typical monthly access cost subscribers around 15 to 20 euros and across several thousand customers, that quickly mounts up. The Court heard the man generated several million euros over the period of offending and that appears to have cost him dearly.
For infringement on a significant commercial scale, the penalty in Greece is a minimum two years’ imprisonment and a fine. The Court of Thessaloniki fined the man 17,000 euros, confiscated equipment used in the course of the offending, then handed down an unprecedented eight-year prison sentence. This apparent line in the sand changes the game in Greece and is likely to have implications beyond this individual reseller.
Time to Make IPTV Customers Pay
According to Skair.gr, the investigation surfaced a database of the reseller’s customers, apparently thousands of them in Greece. The publication states that not only do they face criminal and administrative penalties, but the judicial authorities began making arrests of end users even before the sentence was handed down last week.
The authorities are reported to have obtained the personal details of up to 50,000 IPTV subscribers following a number of raids on various players in the pirate IPTV ecosystem over the past several months. They include the following:
• December 2023: 54-year-old man arrested for “hacking” subscription channels
• March 2024: 60-year-old man arrested for piracy of subscription channels
• March 2024: 43-year-old man for piracy of subscription channels
• April 2024: 2 people arrested for piracy of subscription channels
• April 2024: 54-year-old man arrested for piracy of subscription channels
• July 2024: 25-year-old man arrested for piracy of subscription channels
Running in parallel to the country’s enforcement measures, in July Cosmote TV and Nova signed a deal designed to provide customers with legal access to sports at a more affordable price. Starting on August 23, subscribers to one of the above services were able to get content from the other, for just a small extra charge.
Whether that alone will reduce piracy rates to anywhere near acceptable levels is unknown but a potential eight-year prison sentence may give resellers pause for thought.
