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Premier League, Sky & ACE Celebrate Elusive Globe IPTV Prison Sentence
Premier League, Sky & ACE are celebrating the sentencing of one of the most elusive targets ever pursued in the pirate IPTV market. The man operated an IPTV empire out of Lebanon, supplying pirated content 'wholesale' all around world. Yet, despite an investigation that may already be close to a decade old, the man still isn't being named, and his platform isn't being named either. At least not officially.
The Premier League, UK broadcaster Sky, plus global anti-piracy coalition Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment, are reporting the conclusion of a ‘landmark’ pirate IPTV case in the Middle East.
According to their statement, a joint criminal complaint in Lebanon led to an unnamed defendant being found guilty of five criminal charges, including unspecified intellectual property and cybercrime-related offenses.
The precise origin, nature, and date of a ruling cited in the announcement are not made clear although, at least to some extent, the ruling’s requirements are more detailed.
Highly Important Case, Unfortunately Low on Detail
The rightsholders state that the ruling orders the shutdown of the defendant’s ‘seized websites’ and the deletion of all data from his ‘devices’. The identities and functions of those websites, including when and how they were seized, and the nature of the devices, including their function and what they contained, also go unexplained.
A requirement that all accounts used for client and customer communication must be deleted, seems fairly straightforward, yet still lacks details usually associated with cases of such importance. Hoping to fill in the gaps, TorrentFreak requested a copy of the court order.
“The court order is not public as it is classified as a non-public judicial decision and is subject to confidentiality under local legal procedures,” we were informed.
No Doubt Over Platform’s Importance
The person convicted and subsequently sentenced to serve 11 months in prison and pay more than US$90,000 in penalties and damages, “was the operator of a platform responsible for supplying illegal streams to pirate services around the world,” the rightsholders confirm.
In common with its alleged operator, the service isn’t named. While that’s unfortunate from a reporting perspective, any frustration pales into insignificance when compared to the time, effort, and resources expended by the Premier League, Sky, and ACE on this case.
Even from our very limited knowledge of the investigation, it seems likely to have been one of the longest of its type ever undertaken. Obtaining any type of conviction that is directly linked to the infamous Globe IPTV, as information shows, was never going to be easy.
Globe IPTV
Use of the Globe brand in connection with TV piracy dates back over a decade. The supply of CCCAM servers focused on Sky broadcasts may have laid the groundwork for its entry into the IPTV market towards 2014/2015.
Globe’s focus was on the supply of broadcasters’ streams on a wholesale basis, as the Premier League’s 2022 submission to the European Commission’s Counterfeit and Piracy Watch List explains.
Similar claims featured in subsequent submissions to the EC and the USTR’s Notorious Markets Report. Globe’s ‘wholesale’ strategy meant that it “operates higher up the IPTV ecosystem, selling content and services to resellers who then ultimately make the content available to the public,” the Premier League explained.
Prominent Wholesale Supplier
The claim that Globe was known to have supplied multiple pirate services already sued by the Premier League is supported by the prosecution of Flawless TV, the largest case of its kind ever to conclude in the UK. When Flawless launched in August 2016, Globe was a major supplier to the operation.
Among other content, Globe supplied Flawless with premium content belonging to Sky and BT Sport, at rates fairly easily deduced from one of our earlier reports. The source of that content was cable operator Virgin Media, which for some time had faced consumer-end piracy on a massive scale.
Virgin started to regain control in 2017 and with the introduction of new encryption around a year later, Globe’s cable source in the UK was on life support. Satellite feeds remained viable, however, albeit at significant additional cost to Globe. Virgin Media’s bill was significantly bigger; closing the loophole meant replacing millions of set-top boxes in homes across the UK.
Obscure References to Globe
Over the past couple of years, various industry reports have mentioned Globe quite openly but on occasion, descriptions of events or scenarios that closely match existing knowledge about Globe have also made an appearance. Unaccompanied by the kind of detail required to remove all doubt, these seemingly random snapshots variously seemed to suggest that enforcement wasn’t far away, or might even be imminent.
Following a relatively recent event, also lacking information sufficient to make a provable connection, the signs suggested a potentially terminal blow from which Globe might never recover; albeit from one which it seemingly did.
At least for a while and in theory, potentially far longer than that.
“Anywhere in the World, Pirates Can Be Brought to Justice”
Information has a tendency to be in constant short supply but there’s just enough here to celebrate an anti-piracy achievement many years in the making.
“The case further demonstrates the Premier League’s commitment to protecting its intellectual property around the world,” says Kevin Plumb, General Counsel at the Premier League.
“This is not only important to us and our broadcast partners, but it is essential for the future health of English football and the protection of our fans. This case perfectly shows the benefits of working alongside other rights owners. I would like to thank our co-complainants, Sky and ACE, for their trusted partnership throughout these unique and complex proceedings leading up to this conviction.”
Matt Hibbert, Group Director of Anti-Piracy at Sky, says the ruling sends a strong message that pirates can be brought to justice, no matter where in the world they are.
“The Lebanese judicial authorities in Lebanon, in collaboration with the Lebanese Cyber Crime Bureau successfully pursued the prosecution of this individual, who has been involved in the egregious theft of content for many years.”
After being placed on the United States’ Special 301 watchlist in 2008, Lebanon reportedly did “very little” to improve its protection of intellectual property rights for the next 14 years.
The U.S. Trade Representative removed Lebanon from the Special 301 Watchlist in its 2022 report.
