A man who pocketed £1 million (€1.15m) by running three illegal streaming websites has been jailed. Stephen Woodward sold illegal access to copyrighted content through the websites IPTV Hosting, Helix Hosting and Black and White TV. He used the funds to buy designer clothes and jewellery, holidays and a Jaguar F-Type V8 coupe worth £91,000. His […]
A man who pocketed £300,000 (€352,000) through the operation of an illegal streaming service before he fled the UK has been sentenced to five years in prison. Mark Brockley ran a subscription-based IPTV service known as aFINITY IPTV for around five years, between 2014 and 2019. He was involved in the promotion, sale, and distribution […]
The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police executed a week of action, carrying out interviews across the country as part of a crackdown on the supply of illegal streaming services, with a focus on individuals selling modified Fire Sticks. The operation, in conjunction with FACT and the Premier League, targeted […]
A court has granted a confiscation order against a hacker who was jailed in 2022 after he stole unreleased material owned by famous recording artists and sold it on the dark web in exchange for cryptocurrency. Adrian Kwiatkowski, 23, of Ipswich, was given three months to pay £101,503 (€118,000) at Ipswich Crown Court following proceedings […]
A man who made over £200,000 (€229,500) by reselling an IPTV service that enabled people to watch premium television content without a subscription has been jailed for five years. Mark Brockley, from Liverpool in the northwest of England, made £237,000 by selling subscriptions that enabled the illegal streaming of content hosted by BT Sport, including […]
The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police and its partners have executed a series of raids across the country as part of a crackdown on the supply of illegal streaming services. Officers searched four premises in London, Glasgow, Edinburgh and Stoke and four people were arrested on suspicion of involvement […]
A police operation that disrupts websites illegally providing access to copyrighted content stopped £6 million of advertising revenue from UK traffic reaching these websites in 2022. Operation Creative was launched by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police in 2013 to tackle the funding of illegal streaming websites, which have […]
The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police and anti-piracy agency Web Capio have seized domains that illegally hosted copyrighted content by YouTube supergroup the Sidemen. The domains, somuchcontent.com and sidemencommunity.co.uk, were linked to a site that hosted videos by the Sidemen, including those only available to watch with a subscription. […]
Music industry rights licensing body PRS for Music has revealed what it describes as “encouraging” figures demonstrating the continued success of its Member Anti-Piracy System (MAPS) in the battle against digital music piracy, five years on from its launch. Since 2016, the bespoke automated notice and takedown tool, which tracks PRS for Music repertoire on […]