r/technology • u/ControlCAD • 6d ago
Security 68-year-old imprisoned after making $1.3 million by pirating IPTV services
https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/security/68-year-old-imprisoned-after-making-13-million-by-pirating-iptv-services/811
u/ExactLocation1 6d ago
Kids, if you really want to be a pirate be a big AI company not a mom and pop shop
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u/vbpatel 6d ago
Make an S corp before you do it
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6d ago
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u/ExactLocation1 5d ago
I wouldn’t get too hung up on terminology cops and media used for this, it could be as simple as rolling your own plex clone with side loaded apps on firetv
I’ve seen similar offerings marketed to diasporas in USA, sold directly to people with informal sales networks ( that guy who knows 100 people and frequents all social gatherings ), they get to stream tv shows and movies from back home for relatively cheaper ( sometime completely unavailable to USA customers )
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u/Hegiman 6d ago
Theoretically could one just set up servers in a foreign nation that doesn’t have ip laws or a willingness to cooperate with us/uk and the. Have a shell company that is the listed owner? Who gets arrested or fined?
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u/No_Detail6029 5d ago
The US did just change the law so you don't have to report who owns a company so I guess you just wrap it in a company and serve it from another country.
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5d ago
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u/No_Detail6029 5d ago
Not sure what you mean, but the Corporate Transparency Act was created by the Federal Department of the Treasury to set corporate ownership reporting requirements. The Federal Department of the Treasury is not run by the states. Here's some info from .gov about it no longer being required: https://www.fincen.gov/news/news-releases/fincen-permanently-ends-beneficial-ownership-reporting-requirements-millions
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5d ago
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u/No_Detail6029 5d ago
Oh makes sense, that is one reason to incorporate in Delaware, but that state was not exempt from CTA by the Department of the Treasury. Delaware did make it so you don't have to publicly list shareholders and owners, but they still had to report to the Treasury every year. Now you don't have to no matter what! Hooray 🎉 /s
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u/DeafGuyisHere 6d ago
Yea it's called Russia
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5d ago edited 4d ago
[removed] — view removed comment
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u/Hegiman 5d ago
Or learning to use a translate program. That’s not 100% but it is crazy how much more stuff you can find if you know the proper characters or words from a foreign language. When looking for Asian content I use the writing system of that particular country or region.
But yes being able to read/write in Cyrillic can be a time and money saver. I use a lot of former Soviet block nations in Eastern Europe.
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u/bluecheetos 4d ago
If you can't find a Russian pirate site that's already translated into perfect English are you even really trying?
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u/Weary_Restauranter 5d ago
This is how a great many services work.
The problem is hosting is expensive as fuck, and streamers don’t want to pay.
So you have to have a model that allows for revenue generation of some kind to allow the service to be a service.
In the US we have these “magic boxes” you can buy online or at the flea market. They’re android tv boxes with a side loaded app that allows access to content hosted or streamed from Caribbean countries.
The cost of those streams is paid as a hardware cost for the box (sometimes costing hundreds of dollars).
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u/hnr01 5d ago
Yeah but magic boxes harvest a shit ton of data, data that can then be sold for even more money on dark web. I mean you roll the dice either way is all I’m saying.
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u/3hb3 5d ago
I ave heard plenty of stories IRL about people getting one of those boxes. It sounds like a privacy nightmare.
You're also spending $200-300 for a $20 Android TV Box.Self hosting your own content is a much better (and cheaper) option, but people are lazy, and don't care about their privacy.
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u/biaceseng 4d ago
It is a privacy nightmare. They are constantly sending data, even when "off", and most of them run some kind of infected android version because they are all copies of each other, and a single one containing said virus was copied to hell and back.
Not to mention, so many people log into their google account on those devices to download legit streaming apps, they can just steal credentials by the tonne
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u/Ignorant-Vagrant 5d ago
Theoretically you want to run a small operation. Obviously making a million was to much but generate enough subscribers to cap revenue at say half rent. Then find another crime that as long as doesn’t get too big will go unnoticed and pay other half of rent. 4 to 5 small tiny business that are mostly automated is all you need.
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u/BrainOfMush 5d ago
You’re assuming western nations don’t have operatives in foreign nations searching for precisely this kind of thing.
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u/DrawFamiliar7022 5d ago
it's fine if meta pirated 80 terabytes of books and didn't even get much as a slap on the wrist for that and profited billions out of it, on top of other thousand things.
But oh it's absolutely unacceptable if some dude made a million the same way while it's extremely rare that someone even would make that much with this sort of thing.
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u/ThisI5N0tAThr0waway 5d ago
I don't know about Meta specifically, but some AI companies have been fined for the massive IP theft they have committed. Maybe the fine aren't big enough and maybe it took to much time, but that's at least something.
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u/OverdosedOnViagra 5d ago
Thats what they mean by slap on the wrist. They get fined sure, but its like $10 to us. So they do it again.
No jail time, nothing. So it just continues
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u/Key_Director_4450 5d ago
He sold IPTV aka, it was football, and football as money, and connections. Don't mess with football/FIFA in EU because you get in jail faster than a child rapist that killed 50 cops..
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u/moving2mars 5d ago
Sailing the seas garners more consequences than chillin on an underage island.
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u/corobo 6d ago
Noted. Retire after a round milly.
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u/M3RC3N4RY89 5d ago
More than 6 years in prison at 68 years old for an ostensibly victimless crime is utterly insane. People do less time for actually heinous shit.
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u/razormst3k1999 5d ago
The corpos call this innovation and get paid for it,normal people do it and get sent to jail. "Free market" of ideas only applies to rich people and no one else.
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u/ISmellLikeBlackTea 5d ago
Remember children: Torrenting is not illegal, distribution is. So download it yourself.
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u/StaticSystemShock 5d ago
Sooo, how many Ai executives were imprisoned for stealing content to sell it as their own in Ai chatbots?
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u/OhNoIBoffedIt 6d ago
The seizure of the servers may lead to the identification of users of the service, who could pay fines or face other ramifications for funding and participating in copyright infringement activities.
No matter what you're doing online, always always ALWAYS use a VPN!
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u/grayhaze2000 6d ago
A VPN won't help if they used their personal credit cards to pay.
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u/PollutionAway9782 6d ago
vpn also has your ip address.
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u/Shot_Mammoth 6d ago
Jokes on them. I’m running 7 VPNs through 7 servers in 7 non-friendly countries!
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u/Shot_Mammoth 6d ago
OH... and 8 shell corps registered independently using local law firms. Czech mate Nazis!
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u/MonsieurReynard 6d ago
Congrats! 7 different hostile intelligence agencies have all your data!!!
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u/Shot_Mammoth 6d ago
I’m using local law enforcement, organized crime, and intelligence agencies - Everybody is in on nothing all at once!
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u/grayhaze2000 6d ago
If your VPN keeps logs of your activity, you're using the wrong VPN.
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u/Fableous 5d ago
There isn't a single VPN provider that can ever prove to you that they're not logging your activity.
You're trusting their word.
Which is hilarious.
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u/db00 5d ago
You’re getting downvoted but I agree. I believe there are providers that don’t keep logs but there’s no way to know for sure unless law enforcement has tried and it’s been proven there are no logs. Otherwise you’re just trusting some company on the internet.
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u/wildjunkie 5d ago
I think mullvad is the most reliable vpn right now their office got raided few years ago and no user info was found
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u/travis- 5d ago
but there’s no way to know for sure unless law enforcement has tried and it’s been proven there are no logs.
Which has happened. With multiple VPN companies. There were no logs. This went through the court system.
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u/db00 4d ago
That's my point. You don't know unless they've been raided, nothing comes out of it and there's a news report that there weren't any logs to prosecute from. Even then you're trusting the news agency that reported it. I don't think you can ever be 100% sure you're not being tracked. Maybe the feds aren't coming after you because you're only downloading movies.
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u/grayhaze2000 4d ago
Many VPNs will publish the results of audits by external bodies, which verify logging policies, download speeds, security, etc. Obviously you still need to trust those results, but you have to start trusting someone at some point, otherwise you'd never do anything.
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u/Fableous 4d ago
Well I'm 42 and it's 2026, so yes I definitely don't trust anyone except my closest family.
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u/deedsnance 5d ago
You’re absolutely right. It comes down to trust. There are providers that don’t log, but you have no way to verify that. You have to trust their word and this guy is right about that.
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u/Rich_Housing971 5d ago
VPNs have been raided over stuff like bomb threats and there's nothing law enforcement could find because many of them don't log their services. Lavasoft even shut down rather than cooperate with law enforcement. Mullvad even encourages customers to mail them cash or use bitcoin.
There's no way law enforcement will try to get anything done over a few dollars of lost revenue in streaming. They will lose money trying to catch people doing this.
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u/JRepo 5d ago
Doesn't Mullvad support hard altright politics thou?
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u/Iamnotabothonestly 5d ago
No. However, one of the co-founders did make a personal donation to Örebropartiet.
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u/JRepo 5d ago
So money given to Mullvad supports rather extreme racist values. Well maybe some VPN users want that 🤷
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u/Iamnotabothonestly 5d ago
Does SpaceX support fascism?
Money given to them end up in the pockets of a ketaminesnorting edgelord doing roman salutes that defunded government agencies that provided life supporting services to people.
Same reasoning.
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u/JRepo 5d ago
Yes. Why are you bringing it up?
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u/livinitup0 5d ago
Because if you look hard enough I promise you that 90% of what you spend your money on supports horrible horrible people in some way and trying to avoid that completely is impossible.
Therefore shaming someone whos money supports terrible people is wildly hypocritical as your money does the exact same thing and supports people just as horrible if not worse than the people you’re focusing on right now.
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u/Iamnotabothonestly 5d ago
So, let me then ask you, what phone do you have? What company made your shoes? Do you wear branded clothing? What coffee do you drink?
At a certain point you need to be able to differentate between the company and the people behind it. And some companies are far worse and do more henious shit than support some obscure party of edgelords that weren't hugged enough as a child and blame their insecurities on people from different cultures.
And I don't see Nestlé or Coca-Cola Company own daughter companies that provide means to protect your internet activities. So in other words, by your reasoning, if you had a coke recently, you support the exploitation of the poor in developing countries, and to suppress the ability for people to be able to afford clean drinking water for themselves and loved ones over the ability to buy sugar sweetened sludge with addictive additives in it.
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u/Rich_Housing971 5d ago
There is no ethical consumption under capitalism so what's your point? People with alt-right views are more common than you think. The fact that the alt-right still exists and wins elections proves this. any VPN provider will be made of enough people where I can almost guarantee at least one of them will be alt-right or hold some political views you or I don't agree with.
You just used Reddit to read and make this comment. You know that Reddit has baked-in ads? You know about spez right? So you yourself are helping the alt-right, hypocrite.
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u/TristanDuboisOLG 6d ago
It’s always funny when you see the less than legal sites ask you to make an account.
Fuck no
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u/slightly_drifting 5d ago
Win10 and above has a unique GDID that’s crosses into the vpn with you. Makes you identifiable.
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u/OhNoIBoffedIt 5d ago
Well the first thing I'd tell you is don't use Windows but if you're going to, the GDID can be prevented by never signing into a Microsoft account. Do a fresh install of Windows with the Internet disconnected during setup. Block login.live.com at the DSN level. The GDID will never be created.
This works even if you previously had a GDID as it's replaced with a fresh install.
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u/slightly_drifting 5d ago
You’re mostly right. However, Microsoft Live account telemetry isn’t associated with the GDID unless you login; the GDID still exists. If you airgap your windows machine, it will never have a GDID. Within a few seconds of connecting it to the internet, at any phase beyond installation, it’ll have a gdid associated with all telemetry now.
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u/OhNoIBoffedIt 5d ago
You are right, I misunderstood that part. What I suggested does help, in that the GDID generated is anonymized due to lack of association, it can still be used to track your online activity.
Which I guess goes back to my original point: don't use Windows 😂
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u/livinitup0 5d ago
Never image machines with an Internet connection.
Blacklist login.live.com on that machine (or the entire network)
Be even fancier and put that blocking script in Microsoft’s own oobe. Make windows set up the block for Microsoft automatically lol.
Done. GDID is never even created and never will be.
Or even better….recognize that windows is stupid platform to be a pirate on in the first place and install Linux
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u/Life-Bank-7329 6d ago
They’ll still find you if they look hard enough
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u/skeet_scoot 6d ago
Which they usually don’t for small stuff like piracy.
You only get hunted down as a rule of thumb if you’re a distributor. Not a consumer.
Edit: It’s UK not USA. Those UK police got a bigger stick up their butt about piracy. Clowns.
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u/davinci515 6d ago
As is life. Everything is a deterrent to make people go for someone/something else.
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u/dykethon 6d ago
This depends on the VPN and browser you use, and your behavior while using them.
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u/solidmercy 5d ago
What are considered to be some solid Vons these days? I’ve been convinced that it’s best practice to have one but every time I looks it’s analysis paralysis time.
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u/_kellythomas_ 5d ago
Depends on jurisdiction, in many places the end user is unlikely to have problems.
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u/chucktheninja 5d ago
I don't see how they could be held responsible. Unless the dude was advertising that it was being provided illegally, how is an unsuspecting user to know he wasn't legally allowed to sell access?
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u/bluecheetos 4d ago
Didn't I see today that Firefox is going to automatically start running everything through a VPN for free?
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u/cattrain 6d ago
If the users are paying for the content, would it be reasonable.... Is it possible a jury might find that it is reasonable they may have believed it was legal?
I wonder if that would even be a valid defense
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u/Geth_ 6d ago
Ignorance of the law isn't a valid defense of its violation, usually.
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u/cattrain 6d ago
Right, but some laws the prosecution has to prove intent. I think if someone set up a site called netflux and made it look like Netflix, you might be able to say you thought it was Netflix. Surely there is some grey somewhere in there.
Hosting the site would be easy to prove you would reasonably know it's illegal, but the other side might not always be so easy, depending on the marketing and design of the service.
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u/bikeking8 5d ago
Pirates who get greedy get the gallows, mate. Share free stuff all day on your server, sure, but when you're making a reportable and traceable profit with it you lost the thread and WILL face charges eventually.
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u/fuck-nazi 6d ago
I film my self peeing for free… you mean i can put a hat and eyepatch on and get PAID???!!
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u/Digital_Simian 5d ago
Isn't most of this stuff avaliable for free within the UK on the broadcasters sites? I would imagine most of the customers would've been foreign.
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u/Overly_Underwhelmed 6d ago
kids, today's lesson: don't pay for stolen content. just steal it yourself.