Fines up to 26 thousand euros and up to three years prison. This seems to be the heavy price to pay for those who have used the IPTV illegally, by subscribing to one of the packages that, for a few tens of euros, allow you to access a series of subscription streaming and pay TV services.
In a fight without an ever-tightening neighborhood, it seems that the authorities' aims can soon also go towards users, between fines and even more severe penalties for the most serious cases. If consumers have almost always gone smoothly, there is a risk that things may change in the future.
The first cases
The news would seem to confirm the first steps of the Guardia di Finanza in punishing subscribers, not just service providers. The first news came from the newspaper Italia Sera, which spoke of a Sicilian user who would have received a fine of almost 2000 euros for use of IPTV. The Molise newspaper instead reported on the owner of a bar in the province of Campobasso discovered by the carabinieri while using an illegal IPTV subscription to broadcast the matches to his customers, which would have triggered an immediate complaint to the authorities for violation of the right of author.
The violation of copyright rules would be the key to punishing users: in fact, for this type of violation, Italian law provides forarticle 171 of the copyright law of 1941, fines come on 2500 to 25882 euros.
The law
According to the law, any user who "for fraudulent purposes it produces, offers, imports, promotes, installs, modifies, uses, for public and private use, devices or parts of devices suitable for the decoding of audio-visual transmissions with conditional access carried out over the air, via satellite, via cable, both in form and analog and digital"To anticipate the arrival of the first fines was the CEO of Serie A Luigi De Siervo, ready to do anything to punish those who had used illegal IPTV to watch football matches legally broadcast by Sky or DAZN. If the lower amounts will be reserved for individual users, the higher ones will be sent to bars, restaurants or public places that used these services in their activities, serving a much higher number of people.
In addition to this, some may even be charged with an offense of computer fraud, especially for those caught using the service. Criminal penalties which may also be added compensation various for damaged Pay TV: the means used to use IPTV makes no difference, it is the fraudulent purpose to be punished.
Route change
The tranquility that until now had characterized subscribers to these services, untouchable and almost impossible to trace, could soon change. To admit it was De Siervo himself, on the sidelines of the great operation of last year that led to the dismantling of a criminal organization branched throughout Italy, which used the XStream Codes software to manage the streaming flow to subscribers.
According to him, in fact, through the chronology of the portal it was possible to photograph the users connected to it. By comparing this history with the offers signed by each customer, it will be possible to understand if these people have actually joined the illegal service. The flow generated by each IPTV is indeed easily traceable by the Police: the authorities have full possibility of getting hold of the IP addresses who used the service. If nothing has happened to users so far, it is because the police had decided not to intervene. In the future it may not be like this anymore.
New prospectives
The real problem of this eternal battle is the fact that these illegal associations are able to run for cover in no time. The Guardia di Finanza works to shut down servers and dismantle entire IT equipment, but often these blocks are circumvented and some IPTV systems start working again in a short time.
These organizations immediately notify their "subscribers" away WhatsApp or Telegram changing their addresses, providing users with new access keys and giving everyone the opportunity to get around the "disservice".
A bit like what happens with numerous illegal download sites that first close and then change address and magically return online after a short time.
An unequal struggle in which the authorities seem to start defeated at the start: hence the change of goal, if you cannot defeat the organizations, you will start to hitting users, the real and most real vital source of these services which, if frightened and decimated, could also be discouraged in the future to subscribe.
Exemplary punishments
Impunity towards some users could therefore be completely reversed in favor of a new method of fighting these phenomena. For now, in all other cases, users have somehow been pardoned, but it was enough to deeply touch the world of football and that of legal streaming services to start a fire in a row that could really not save anyone. The fines they could begin to flow, for a strategy that wants to discourage users from embracing these illegal methods of using the contents. In this way we want to punish those who have committed a crime but also to discourage those who want to commit the crime.
This would be the hardest blow to legal IPTVs, radically change the culture of users and convince them to make a legal subscription or at least make them understand that these services are not only damage for those who produce the contents, but also for all the other users who pay legal subscriptions every month for see football games, movies and TV shows. This would be true defeat for the world of illegal streaming, without a doubt.
