Pirate IPTV Server Shut Down as City of London Police Target UK ‘Bulk Seller’

City of London Police say a man was arrested this week as part of an operation to disrupt the supply of pirate IPTV subscriptions in the UK. After targeting a residential address and four business addresses in the West Midlands, police say a 38-year-old man was detained on suspicion of copyright and money laundering offenses. Police also shared photos taken during the operation, a relative rarity these days but a welcome source of additional information nonetheless.

Police and anti-piracy groups in the UK appear to be following through with a pledge to keep cracking down on those involved in the pirate IPTV ecosystem.

Most arrests recently have targeted IPTV subscription resellers, i.e those who buy subscriptions and sell them on to friends, family, and increasingly anyone on social media, at a profit.

A report from the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police suggests that a different type of player was targeted in an operation earlier this week. Photographs taken during the operation appear to back that up.

Target: West Midlands

Police say that the operation began in the early hours of Monday morning with a raid on a residential address in Wolverhampton, West Midlands. No specifics are provided beyond that but ‘dawn raids’ often take place between 6am and 7am, before suspects have had a chance to leave or wake up enough to destroy evidence.

“A 38-year-old man was arrested on suspicion of copyright and money laundering offenses, after he was suspected to have sold illegal streaming packages in bulk for others to sell to the public,” City of London Police report.

While subscription resellers with enough reach could also be described as selling packages in bulk, additional search warrants executed at four business addresses in Wolverhampton and Coventry indicate a more significant player.

Server Seized

According to police, officers from PIPCU assisted by their colleagues at West Midlands Police, seized hardware from one of the locations.

“Officers seized a server, which was used to host the illegal streaming service, at one of the addresses and the service was shut down,” the report adds.

Not shared as often as they once were, PIPCU also provided the following image from the operation. Given the unusual angle, it may actually be a pair of images side by side.

Hardware aside for a moment, the location shown in the image is unquestionably a datacenter. Whether the datacenter is in Wolverhampton or Coventry isn’t revealed, but the image on the right isn’t just a mess of wires hiding a man’s face either.

Satellite Signal Distribution

If we zoom in to take a closer look, the piece of hardware (top right image, turned at an angle, blue cables) apparently of interest the technician isn’t a typical server, but it is used for distribution.

Manufactured by Danish company Triax, the device is known as a multiswitch and is designed for use in homes or other accomodation where one satellite signal to a single receiver isn’t enough.

Signals received at the box can be sent to a number of devices simultaneously by assigning a unique frequency channel to each device. This allows multiple receivers to receive different satellite channels at the same time, which could come in very handy for those with an end use that requires that kind of thing.

Further confirmation that the images were taken in a datacenter appears in the image on the left (above). Not shared as part of PIPCU’s press release, the photograph appeared on social media, in lieu of the more interesting image discussed above.

Pirate Service Used to Pirate Sky TV

Unsurprisingly, the packages allegedly sold provided illegal access to Sky channels but in all likelihood the overall channel availability would’ve been much broader than that, affecting many other broadcasters beyond Sky.

However, as a subscription broadcaster and the central component of the UK’s BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign, this operation isn’t the first and won’t be the last for Sky, as it works to press home the campaign’s mantra of keeping consumers safe, while keeping its own content free from pirates.

“When people illegally stream they provide their personal information to criminals and the risks that result are very real,” says Matt Hibbert, Group Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky.

“We are grateful to the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit for leading this action. We’ll continue to do everything we can to protect our content from theft, and to help keep consumers safe.”

The man arrested on Monday has since been released under investigation.