AUTHORITIES have celebrated another win against illegal streaming after shutting down a popular platform visited by more than 123 million times.
The site showed major football games including Premier League matches, Series A, La Liga, Bundesliga and Ligue 1 on the cheap.
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Known as Calcio, the site was available across 134 domains.
It was particularly popular in Italy – which made up 80 per cent of Calcio’s traffic – but it was used by people in other countries across Europe, as well as the US too.
The operation was ran by a group located in Moldova.
Those behind it agreed to cease Calcio after being approached, according to the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the world’s leading anti-piracy coalition which led this latest crackdown.
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It comes as telly bosses warn that illegal streaming is costing the industry “hundreds of millions of dollars”.
“If you speak to friends and colleagues, [or] you watch football, people will know that you can get jail-broken Fire Sticks, and you can access pirated services on Fire Sticks,” said Nick Herm, chief operating officer at Sky, earlier this year.
There have been a number of raids, arrests and jail-time for operators in recent years.
The latest sting saw the world’s biggest streaming network visited 1.6 billion times shut down.
Efforts to bring down Calcio was taken in coordination with sports streaming giant DAZN.
“Shutting down illegal operations like Calcio is vital for protecting fans, safeguarding jobs, and preserving the value and integrity of live sports,” said Ed McCarthy, COO of DAZN Group.
“ACE and DAZN’s decisive action in removing this site has prevented further harm to the wellbeing of the sports ecosystem.”
Larissa Knapp, Executive Vice President and Chief Content Protection Officer for the Motion Picture Association (MPA), added: “Piracy diminishes the commercial value of a live sports broadcast well before the final whistle blows, harming broadcasters, sports leagues, and fans alike.
“With the start of the Italian football season, I commend the team for the timely takedown of this notorious operation.”
Warning over ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks
Illegal streaming can be delivered by a number of devices by one of the most common are ‘jailbroken’ Fire Sticks, which means a third-party media server software has been installed on to it.
The software most commonly used is called Kodi.
It can grant users unrestricted access to new features and apps the normal version of the device wouldn’t allow – but it is not legal to use in the UK.
But it becomes illegal when a box is used to stream subscription channels for free.
It is also illegal to buy or sell these modified devices which have become known as “fully-loaded” – a term that describes how the software has been altered to allow access to subscription-only channels.
“These devices are legal when used to watch legitimate, free to air, content,” the government said at the time.
“They become illegal once they are adapted to stream illicit content, for example TV programmes, films and subscription sports channels without paying the appropriate subscriptions.”
Image credit: Getty / The Sun
