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THE HAGUE, Netherlands (AFP) — An international police operation has shut down “one of the world’s largest” illegal online streaming services, used by some 22 million people worldwide and causing billions of dollars in copyright damages, EU law agencies said on Wednesday.
Police from nine EU countries and Britain swooped on suspects on Tuesday, shutting down servers and carrying out searches, Eurojust and Europol said in separate statements.
“In a large-scale operation, over 100 searches were carried out against 102 suspects. Eleven suspects were arrested in Croatia,” the EU’s judicial cooperation arm Eurojust said.
The suspects “illegally distributed material from streaming services online, including films and series,” it added, saying that “the illegal service served more than 22 million users worldwide.”
The suspects also pirated more than 2,500 television channels including sports channels.
“They were able to make over 250 million euros in illegal profits per month. The economic damages to the copyright holders of the material is estimated at 10 billion euros,” Eurojust said.
To evade authorities, the suspects allegedly used encrypted messaging services to communicate and false identities to register phone numbers, credit cards, server rentals and television subscriptions.
The Hague-based Eurojust coordinated the operation by British, Croatian, Dutch, Italian, Romanian, Swedish and Swiss law authorities, while Europol supported the operation by deploying experts and analyzing the available intelligence during the investigation phase.
“In addition to intellectual property crime (copyright infringement), there are indications of further crimes, such as money laundering and cybercrime, which are currently under investigation,” Europol said.
Illegal streaming of films and TV programs reached some 215 billion illegal site visits in 2022, said Britain-based MUSO, which claims to have the most comprehensive data on piracy websites.
The figure showed an 18% increase between 2021 and 2022, covering 480,000 films and TV shows, MUSO said last year.
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By Agence France-Presse
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