The efforts of the Italian authorities to end piracy have been extended to tracking illegal newspaper providers by unconventional means. What began as a hunt against Xtream operators has extended to an unprecedented quest to end all forms of piracy.
Everything indicates that distributors of illegal newspapers are not using traditional sites to share content (under a monthly subscription), but are using communication platforms for smartphones such as WhatsApp or Telegram.
As reported, they managed to identify three people who controlled multiple groups for these transactions. Everything indicates that one of the culprits managed to decipher the passwords of the newspapers to distribute them to other people.
However, the investigation did not end with the arrest of these men. In this case, and in collaboration with several editors of the L’Unione Sarda newspaper, they continued to track the whereabouts of the pirated copies, thus obtaining other important points where they were distributed.
Not only that, but they are also taking into consideration the tracking of consumers of this content so that they pay different fines for the acquisition of newspapers.
Lack of cooperation by Telegram
The authorities indicated that there is still a lot of work. So far, they have managed to identify two distribution channels, but there is a third party of greater proportions that they still cannot control: Telegram. Researchers have tried to communicate with the company, but so far, they have not received an answer.
This lack of cooperation by the Telegram team would be hiding 500,000 pirate users divided into eight distribution groups.
Giuseppe Zafarana, commander of the Guardia di Finanza of Italy, said they will not rest to stop all distributors and consumers of illegal content. The plan is to cover sectors such as cinema, journalism, television, and other digital content.
He also said that those responsible for redistributing this content will be captured and all the profits obtained by these methods will be retained. It did not rule out fines for consumers as we mentioned previously, but given the number of people they could be, these fines are likely to focus on small groups to show to the rest the consequences.
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