The Guardia di Finanza denounced 223 people who had a pirated subscription to watch Serie A. They risk eight years in prison
A turning point in the investigation of the Guardia di Finanza on pirated subscriptions: after having closed several sorting centers and denounced the owners, now the Nucleo speciale beni e servizi has decided to denounce 223 clients, that is people who paid a monthly subscription of 10-15 euros to watch Sky, Netflix, DAZN and other video streaming platforms.
It is the first time in Italy that citizens are reported for illegally using the platforms that retransmitted the pay-TV signal.
What do they risk? Up to eight years in prison and a fine of up to 25,000 euros. And most likely in the coming months more people will be added to the book of suspects. The turnover is estimated to be in the tens of millions of euros, with many Italians using this illegal system to watch TV series, movies and Serie A and Champions League matches. The investigation of the Guardia di Finanza has lasted several months and has managed to trace some of the transmission centers of the illegal signals, but the battle is still long.
Sky pezzotto, how it works
One of the terms used to define the system is "Sky pezzotto", since most users subscribe to watch illegally the channels of the satellite broadcaster. Taking out an illegal subscription to watch premium content (usually Sky, DAZN and Netflix channels) is quite simple: you just have to pay a monthly fee that can vary between 10 and 25 euros and use an ad hoc decoder. Usually you pay the subscription to a "reseller", that is a kind of "official" reseller of the illegal signal. In Italy there are dozens of people who illegally sell these services and the GDF is on their trail to knock out the organization.
What are the risks for the 223 denounced
The Guardia di Finanzia has denounced 223 users of illegal IPTV. Now they risk to go to trial to defend themselves from the accusation of having watched in an illegal way series, movies and sport events. The suspects face up to eight years in prison and a fine of 25,000 euros. In addition, the law on copyright also provides for the confiscation of the tools used, such as television sets, computers or smartphones.
To carry out the investigation, the Guardia di Finanza also availed itself of the support of Fapav, the Federation for the protection of audiovisual and multimedia content.