Piracy: Guardia di Finanza closes down websites and Telegram channels

New hard blow to computer piracy in Italy: Guardia di Finanza closed down 58 websites and 18 Telegram channels and denounced four people

Piracy suffers a new blow from Guardia di Finanza of Gorizia thanks to "Evil Web", the operation with which 58 illegal websites and 18 Telegram channels have been put under preventive seizure. It's enough to see the numbers to understand the greatness of the measure, ordered by the GIP of the Court of the city of Isonzo: the numbers of the investigation report an estimate of 80 million annual accesses, that is about 90% of the audiovisual and publishing piracy in Italy.

The big hit of Evil Web is, according to what declared by the Guardia di Finanza, a site indicated as the reference point of the Italian piracy. Among its contents available for download, at least until a few hours ago, there were softwares, guides and indications on the different informatics methodologies that in a few clicks allowed to illegally take possession of several copyright protected contents. The operation, however, is not over yet: the intervention is in fact focusing on the identification and blocking of the so-called aliases, that is all the second and third level domains that often appear on the web after the closure of the original site, in order to circumvent the measures decided by the Judicial Authority. A real novelty in Italy, that in the criminal field opens the doors to an even more determined path against piracy on the web.

Piracy: Evil Web's measures

In addition to the closure of the sites and Telegram channels, the investigation has already led to four denunciations, computer experts covered by fantasy names such as Diabolik, Doc, Spongebob and Webflix. It is from Diabolik that Evil Web started from Friuli Venezia Giulia, reaching Puglia and Emilia Romagna, up to Germany, Holland and the United States.

The reputation of the pirates, even if bad, would have been consecrated also by the instant messaging and broadcasting services, used for the diffusion and the identification of the protected contents on the net. The four computer experts looted a large number of multimedia products, including first-run movies, sporting events, books and magazines, pornography and audiovisuals belonging to pay TV.

The enormous quantity of content is accompanied by an equally great damage: we are talking about 500 million euros of damage to the Italian GDP and over 6 thousand jobs at risk, for a total of over one billion euros for the national economy.

Guardia di Finanza: investigations continue on the subscribers to the "pezzotto"

Another pivotal point of the investigation of the Guardia di Finanza is that of the subscribers to the "pezzotto", already at the center of investigations in September 2019. This system that allows to take advantage, also in this case in a completely illegal way, of a subscription to pay TV such as Sky, Dazn and other realities through an IPTV system could make its users sleepless nights.

The thousand subscribers already identified, on the national territory and abroad, and those who will be reported later to the Judicial Authority in the course of the operation risk big: in fact, the law provides for up to 3 years of imprisonment and over 25,000 euros in fines. In addition to this, there could also be another crime, receiving stolen goods, punished by article 648 of the Penal Code.