Selling pirate IPTV subscriptions has always been illegal and after the EU’s top court confirmed as much in 2017, consuming unlicensed content is illegal too. Nevertheless, these offenses are typically treated differently.

Once identified, those who operate or sell access to illicit services are unlikely to get a free pass. Yet subscribers to those services have almost always walked away completely unscathed.

Limited Time For Success

The difference isn’t just about supply being more serious. Since fines and similar measures punish those directly responsible for those alleged lost sales reported so often, a successful outcome necessarily means getting those same people back on side and spending money.

Picking the right cases from which to harvest subscriber details is also important; a case concluded in Naples recently could hardly be more perfect.

Dismantling Italia TV

In December 2024, a popular IPTV supplier was shut down following an investigation by the Guardia di Finanza of Naples in collaboration with the Technological Fraud Unit of Rome. Alleged ringleader Cristian Fidato, 23, was reportedly responsible for sourcing the illegal content, with new clients onboarded by two colleagues, Ukraine-born Anatoliy Perrotta, 30, and 44-year-old Fiorino Della Corte.

The investigating judge found that Italia TV had around 6,000 subscribers, mostly in Campania in Southern Italy, but also in countries elsewhere in Europe, including Belgium, Switzerland, and Latvia. The IPTV platform’s servers were close to hand in Naples itself, at least until they were seized by the financial police and taken away for investigation.

Major Rightsholders’ Content

As a provider catering to mainstream demand, Italia TV offered content from the major Hollywood studios, Netflix, Disney+, and Amazon Prime, plus Sky and DAZN which offer live sports, including all-important Serie A football matches.

Even before the raid, investigators at the Guardia di Finanza had reportedly blocked 19 sites that worked as a redirect mechanism for Italia TV, before adding another 25+ later to finish the job. Those who previously made it through became subscribers after making payments to bank accounts in Italy and beyond.

Early estimates suggested that Cristian Fidato opened around 32 accounts, sometimes under false names including “Gennaro Maddaloni”, variously claiming to be a student supported by his parents according to one report , or self-employed according to others.

Fidato allegedly claimed to have a nine-figure income but for tax purposes, nothing was reported to the state. Over four years of operations, Italia TV packages covering movies, TV shows and live sports, were available for €80 per year, generating an estimated €850,000 in revenue.

Lots of Powerful Hardware, Neatly Arranged

Around a third of the service’s subscribers (2,000) paid using cryptocurrency, which landed in dozens of wallets, all of which were identified by law enforcement. Italia TV’s interest in crypto went further than that, however.

After the raid in 2024, descriptions of the provider’s server room and reports of a possible crypto mining operation, remained just that. The usual images of servers and other hardware weren’t part of the package released to the media, but a little digging online more than makes up for their absence.

Showcasing everything from RGB-loaded gaming PCs and multi-GPU crypto mining rigs, to sundry servers and other hardware with less obvious tasks, TikTok was the platform of choice for Italia TV’s ringleader.

While in many ways typical of operations dismantled in the past, Fidato had a disturbing sideline business running in parallel.

Investigators discovered 1,600 CSAM images and videos which Fidato had been offering separately via WhatsApp groups, reportedly for the equivalent of pocket change each. Police also found an indoor area equipped with lighting and an irrigation system used for the cultivation of cannabis.

Sentenced: Four Years and Four Months in Prison

Fidato and Anatoliy Perrotta opted to have their cases handled under the abbreviated procedure. This means that the court makes a decision based purely on evidence obtained during the preliminary investigations. Less resources are expended getting a case to trial and once there, trials are wrapped up more quickly. In return, defendants typically get a one-third discount on their sentence.

At the Neapolitan Court on June 16, preliminary investigations Judge Leda Rossetti issued the following verdict:

• Cristian Fidato: 4 years and 4 months in prison. Fined €22,000.
• Anatoliy Perrotta: 1 year and four months in prison (conditional/suspended)

A third defendant who pleaded guilty at an earlier stage received a one-year prison sentence.

Whether the affected rightsholders intend to pursue Fidato and Perrotta in a civil action for damages is still unclear. The fate of subscribers, meanwhile, appears to be headed in only one direction.

Subscribers Face Administrative Fines

As promised for many months, subscribers of Italia TV are now at risk of receiving an administrative fine.

Coordinated by Deputy Prosecutor of Naples Silvio Pavia and Deputy Prosecutor Alessandro Milita, it’s being reported that an investigation carried out by the Guardia di Finanza successfully identified more than 6,000 subscribers.

A La Stampa report ( paywall ) claims that according to its own investigation, some fines have already been sent out with some recipients paying the amount requested. The report makes no mention of the all-important fine amount, instead citing the range expected under law; a minimum of €51.33 for a first offense up to the repeat offender maximum of €5,000.

There are no reports of unexpectedly large fines in the initial batch sent out last month to 2,282 subscribers of a different service, so it’s likely that broadly the same parameters, whatever they are, will also be applied here.

Opinion: Punishments and the Long-Term Objective

In light of Cristian Fidato’s fine of just €22,000 for running a service, the theoretical maximum of €5,000 for viewing offenses seems somewhat disproportionate. Anatoliy Perrotta’s sentence, which carries no fine at all, raises the possibility of viewers being fined more than a person directly profiting from exactly the same platform.

Nobody will relish receiving a fine in the mail, which is the entire point of sending them. However, considering the long-term goal, perceptions of fairness could come into play at some point, adding another complication to an already risky strategy of using force against former and potential customers.

To be considered a success, fines need to do just enough to turn pirates into subscribers without destroying existing goodwill; limited damage is already inevitable.

Italian football clubs and their partner broadcasters currently have no other rightsholders to hide behind, but with the authorities positioned to act as a punishment proxy, they may have already bought a little more time. But not much.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

In countries where site-blocking has been established for years, relatively small but always expanding measures happen mostly unannounced. It’s often too late to complain when the public are the last to know.

Enhanced blocking measures and tools, with an emphasis on speed and limited judicial oversight, already receive support under national law. Italy’s high profile Piracy Shield system is one such example; mandatory participation by local ISPs to rapidly block alleged pirate sites, no questions asked, has now expanded to other service providers and intermediaries in less than two years.

Operators of third party DNS resolvers, such as Cloudflare, Google, and Quad9, are now seen as anti-piracy enforcers with an obligation to comply. Internet users who find themselves blocked by their ISP, can use public DNS resolvers to circumvent blocking. Italy wants to close that loophole as quickly as possible and according to AGCOM, work with Google is already underway.

Court Instructs Google to Join Piracy Shield

Piracy Shield welcomed a new, but presumably reluctant addition to the site-blocking framework as part of a limited trial last month.

Google’s involvement is linked to a decision handed down by the Court of Milan last December. When football league Serie A complained that Cloudflare was refusing to comply with site-blocking orders, the Court said that a failure to block moving forward would incur fines of €10,000 per day.

A similar case against Google reached the same conclusion in March. AGCOM said that Serie A’s case was so strong, Google’s participation in the case wasn’t required.

Google’s participation in Piracy Shield most certainly was, however.

Piracy Shield Relayed Blocking Orders to Google

The football clubs of Serie A played their last games of the season May 23-25. In line with established procedures, rightsholder monitoring during the days running up to those matches led to pirate site domain names and IP addresses being added to the non-public Piracy Shield database.

According to AGCOM commissioner Massimiliano Capitanio, once the final matches got underway, blocking instructions sent by rightsholders to Piracy Shield, were relayed by the latter to local ISPs, and also directly to Google.

“Through a process developed with the Mountain View company, the sites reported on the Piracy Shield platform during the last championship matches were promptly communicated to Google which, consequently, prevented access through its public DNS. A first but important sign of collaboration in this battle for legality,” Capitanio said.

When presented with a domain name, Google’s DNS ordinarily responds with the relevant IP address as determined by its records, thus facilitating access to the corresponding website. When a domain name is operated by pirates offering live football streams, for example, internet users who access the domain may reach a site where Serie A matches are made available for free.

Once Google blocks or otherwise tampers with the records that link a domain to an IP address, users of Google’s DNS won’t be directed to the pirate site in question. The extent of Google’s blocking in the trial last month is unknown but, in theory, it could’ve been significant.

Piracy Shield Transparency Remains Poor

Behind-the-scenes operations at Piracy Shield are not for public consumption. Since the domain names and IP addresses blocked via the platform aren’t made available officially, reliance on data made available unofficially is the only option available.

As illustrated in the image above, domains ( FQDN ) and IPv4 IP addresses are quite heavily redacted; most likely a necessary limitation to ensure that the valuable piracyshield.iperv.it resource stays online.

Fortunately, the redactions don’t hinder collection of data on the number of domains and IP addresses blocked, and the dates when those blocks were requested.

Data shows that blocking requests in the days leading up to May 23 and ending on May 25 when the championship games concluded, concerned 988 FQDN and 78 IPv4 IP addresses.

How many tickets were processed by Google, either in full, in part, or not, is unavailable to the public. Running totals of the number of domains and IP addresses requested for blocking overall is the extent of current transparency, with no sign of change anytime soon.

There are no obvious surprises in the tickets referenced above, but the presence of Amazon IP addresses had the potential to pique Google’s interest, if nothing else.

Google Will Still Need to Do More

Describing the tests last month as “experimental”, Commissioner Capitanio expects to see Google’s full participation in the very near future.

“The goal is for this experimental activity to be fully operational as soon as possible and for other entities involved in the accessibility of pirate sites, such as VPNs, to adopt automated measures to block pirate sites within 30 minutes of AGCOM’s report, in full compliance with national law,” he explains.

“At the same time, other actions must be taken to combat the phenomenon, such as prohibiting access to pirate APPs and continuing to sanction users who illegally use these services.”

In a world filled with uncertainty, “other actions must be taken” is an anti-piracy standard that hasn’t changed in decades; most likely, it never will.

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.

The original Napster service was launched by Shawn Fanning and Sean Parker on June 1, 1999 . Had it not been sued into oblivion by the record labels, it would’ve celebrated its 26th anniversary last Sunday.

In reality, Napster didn’t live for very long at all. The service was shut down by court order in July 2001 and in this month 23 years ago, Napster Inc. filed for bankruptcy.

Napster Brand Lives On, Legally

For more than two decades, the Napster brand has lived on. The company’s assets were initially acquired by Roxio, which led to its PressPlay music service relaunching in 2003 with Napster branding. After a fresh start as a legal music store, Napster was later acquired by Best Buy. In 2011, streaming service Rhapsody became Napster’s new owner and a few years later, Rhapsody itself reappeared with Napster branding.

These changes in Napster’s ownership offer very little excitement, a sign perhaps that Napster’s pirate roots were ancient history. Yet, starting in early 2017, the RIAA began sending DMCA notices to Google containing requests to have Napster URLs deindexed from search results. In January 2022, that suddenly stopped, only to suddenly start back up again, exactly two years later.

What exactly triggered these complaints is unknown but, earlier this year, a complaint filed in Italy went further still. Characterizing Napster as a platform of mass infringement, the complaint requested measures that would effectively prevent Napster from doing business anywhere in the country.

“Massive Copyright Violations”

The Italian Society of Authors and Publishers (SIAE) is one of the world’s largest collection societies. According to its website, it represents over 100K members, administers 62 million Italian and international works, and has “reciprocal representation agreements” with 184 authors’ societies around the world.

On March 24, 2025, SIAE filed a complaint with Italian telecoms regulator AGCOM, containing a long list of allegedly infringing URLs linking to songs by mainly local artists. The complaint described the list as an example of infringing content offered by Napster, so should not be considered exhaustive.

SIAE’s complaint noted that “the massive nature of the copyright violations” is highlighted when SIAE’s repertoire index is used as a reference.

Having confirmed that the content reported by SIAE was actually available on Napster.com, these alleged violations of copyright (Law 633/41 ( pdf ) ) were sufficient for AGCOM and any linked bodies to examine the complaint more closely.

In this case and those similar, a step-by-step process resulting in an adverse decision usually leads to domains being blocked by ISPs nationwide. Pirate sites tackle blocking with new domains and other circumvention tactics. Legal streaming sites aren’t typically confronted with that kind of problem.

AGCOM Launches Investigation

Checks revealed that the domain Napster.com was registered at Cloudflare “on behalf of an unidentifiable customer” with hosting services for the platform also provided by Cloudflare.

A preliminary investigation carried out by the Directorate for Digital Services and Protection of Fundamental Rights confirmed the alleged violations, so the complaint wasn’t considered inadmissible or unfounded.

Since Napster’s servers were deemed to be located overseas, “personal communication” advising the start of a procedure against it was described as “overly burdonsome”.

Instead, a notification via AGCOM’s website and via email (most likely to Cloudflare) were considered sufficient. The communication raised the possibility of Napster “spontaneously complying” with SIAE’s requests, which usually means taking down the content in question.

No Defense by Napster, Disaster Looms

AGCOM reports that no counter-arguments were received in response to its notifications and the recorded music listed in the site blocking application remained accessible on the pages reported by SIAE. Of course, that’s potentially problematic in copyright cases generally, so when AGCOM found that under Italian law no exceptions applied to the content in question, its continued online presence was “believed to be unjustified.”

All of the above taken together, especially in light of the overseas servers, led to the conclusion that service providers could be instructed to block access to Napster in Italy, to prevent ongoing copyright infringement. Or rather, that’s typically what happens to pirate sites. Here, various factors took the matter in a different direction.

Before issuing a blocking order, AGCOM must consider adequacy, necessity, and proportionality; i.e whether the measure is suitable for the task in hand, is necessary or can the same effect be achieved by less restrictive means, and is a reasonable response under the circumstances.

Blocking Would Be Disproportionate

Based on the report of AGCOM commissioner Elisa Giomi, who happens to be an outspoken opponent of Italy’s Piracy Shield blocking system, AGCOM concluded that disabling access to the entire Napster website was not an option.

[T]he website http://napster.com reported by the applicant is a paid music streaming service which features a very high number of songs (110 million, as reported on the site’s homepage ) which are not limited exclusively to the sound works referred to [in the blocking application],” AGCOM’s decision reads.

“Considering that the violation ascertained concerns a limited number of works compared to the content of the reported site, the adoption of a measure to disable access to the entire website would be a disproportionate measure on the basis of the principles detailed above.”

The Right Decision But a Very Strange Case

In borderline cases, subjective assessments could go either way but, in this case, it’s obvious that AGCOM made the appropriate decision under the circumstances. However, there’s an unusual element to this blocking application that raises the question of why it even exists.

Under Italian copyright law, two entities are responsible for “ preventing and ascertaining ” certain violations within their competences. The first entity is telecoms regulator AGCOM, the second is the Italian Society of Authors and Publishers, the same entity listed as the applicant in the blocking case against Napster.

Even after a fleeting view of the paperwork, blocking was always the incorrect response in these circumstances. Miracles aside, the application was always likely to fail against a substantially non-infringing licensed music streaming service based in the United States, where a failure to license usually ends in a mauling from the major labels.

So, on the basis that AGCOM came to the same conclusion very easily, that raises a question;

Why did a public economic body founded 140+ years ago, with a key role in Italy’s Permanent Advisory Committee on Copyright, and recognized as the institution representing the interests of Italian authors, press ahead with a blocking application that had virtually no chance of success?

More fundamentally, success would’ve prevented the alleged infringement, but presumably would’ve denied the artists and companies behind Napster’s 110 million track library any opportunity to make money via that platform in the Italian market.

Any responses to our requests for comment will appear here in due course.

AGCOM’s decision, which denies the blocking request but refers the alleged violations of copyright to the judicial police, is available here ( pdf )

From: TF , for the latest news on copyright battles, piracy and more.