According to a phrase popularized by Carl Sagan, extraordinary claims should be supported by extraordinary evidence. A new piracy scare story published on Sunday takes a different approach. The extraordinary claim is that fake IPTV portals run by law enforcement are entrapping “ordinary users” to obtain evidence of their crimes. Supported by exactly zero evidence, the report claims that hundreds of internet users have already been identified.
In the post-Napster, pre-YouTube world of 2004, a peculiar TV miniseries began to circulate online.
The main character in The Scene went by the nickname Drosan. He was a member of a piracy release group called CPX and soon found himself up to his neck in drama after selling leaked movies to contacts in Asia.
Blurred Lines: Fiction & Fact Combine
While entertained and intrigued by the storyline, the show’s target pirate audience became more suspicious with every passing episode. Conspiracy theories were shared back and forth, gaining traction thanks to the discovery of on-screen ‘evidence’ and perceived hints and clues.
Were The Scene’s video files acting as bait to identify pirates in the now-booming BitTorrent community? Was the storyline about to coincide with real world events, a major bust perhaps, with viewers somehow implicated in a forthcoming crackdown?
Perhaps more urgently, were some pirate sites actually honeypots set up by the feds and, if so, which ones were safe? In that paranoia-soaked, mostly VPN-less era, the honeypot theory made perfect sense. Two decades later, could the same hold true?
Bogus Pirate Portals
After constantly hearing about pirate IPTV providers in the media, it’s inevitable that some people will want to try things out for themselves. For those with no experience, search engine results are unpredictable at best and there’s always a risk of spending money and getting nothing in return.
Launched last year in the UK, the BeStreamWise anti-piracy campaign showed how regular people blindly handed over their names, addresses, and credit card details, for a streaming service that didn’t even exist. Yet, according to a Repubblica report published on Sunday, potential IPTV subscription buyers in Italy face something much worse.
“If you’re thinking of subscribing to a pirate site, if you dream of watching football matches, dramas, films, and TV shows for just a handful of euros a year, take into account that not everything will end smoothly,” the report begins.
“For a year, law enforcement has deployed a weapon capable of disrupting the plans of [pirate IPTV] customers. The pirate site that asks you to share your name and surname, including your personal credit card, could actually be the subject of investigators.”
Since the rest of what promises to be a big story sits behind a subscription paywall, once again it’s time to hand over credit card details to online strangers and then hope for the best.
Completely Indistinguishable Fakes
Experienced IPTV subscribers report that a good quality pirate service can be mistaken for the real thing. The article claims that bogus pirate IPTV portals operated by law enforcement are so perfect, they’re “completely indistinguishable” from real pirate sites. So with the initial deception a success, what now?
“For a year now, there have been decoy sites (created by law enforcement) on the Internet that have a specific goal: to attract ordinary users by acquiring proof of their illegitimate conduct,” the report notes.
“In the hands of investigators, there are thus hundreds of names of Italians who have tried to enjoy Serie A or the best fiction, but without subscribing legally to DAZN, Sky, Infinity.”
The report strongly implies that these sites exist to lure in unsuspecting customers, gather evidence of wrongdoing, then use self-provided names and addresses to issue fines. It doesn’t state that directly but most reasonable readers seem likely to draw that conclusion.
“The initiative by law enforcement is part of a specific strategy that is very popular with both DAZN and Serie A,” the piece continues, adding: “[T]hey are calling for fines – from 500 to 5,000 euros – for ordinary people who do not pay a regular subscription.”
Uphold The Law
The revelation that those employed to uphold the law are using deception to encourage new offenses, sounds like a pretty big story. A 2022 analysis (pdf) of so-called sting operations and entrapment defenses in Italy, Europe, and the United States, notes the following:
“Art. 55 of the Italian code of criminal procedure provides that the Judicial Police has the duty to ‘prevent crimes from being carried to further consequences, search for the perpetrators, carry out the necessary acts to secure evidence and collect whatever else may be useful under the law.’
“For this reason, without reform, there is no room in Art. 55 c.p.p. to include ‘inciting to committing a crime’ among public officials’ functions, as, under Italian law, a duty to prevent further consequences stands, and it forbids any kind of instigation conduct.”
More fundamentally, perhaps, is whether a crime has been committed at all. In two cases handled by different judges this year, 23 pirate IPTV subscribers were acquitted due to there being no evidence of a crime. The general principle that criminal law should not be invoked when another branch of law can be used to solve an issue was applied here; all defendants received small administrative fines of 150 euros instead.
No Source Stated or Implied
In summary, we have an unsourced claim that bogus pirate IPTV portals, designed to deceive “ordinary people” (the term is used twice in the article), have been operated by law enforcement in Italy for the last year. The alleged purpose is to gather evidence in support of an administrative offense punishable by a 150 euro fine, if indeed any offenses were even committed by the hundreds of people reportedly identified.
On the balance of probabilities, the scenario as portrayed seems unlikely at best. If the storyline had appeared in The Scene back in 2004, the conspiracy theorists may have struggled with the lack of substance, but that alone rules nothing out.
Incidentally, the creators of The Scene denied having an agenda; the idea that the show was “some kind of anti-piracy propaganda is truly silly,” director Mitchell Reichgut later said. Some still had their suspicions and not entirely without cause.
It later transpired that one of the people behind the show was Bruce Forest, a long-time member of the secretive piracy community known as The Scene, from where the show obtained its name. Forest, the self-styled Prince of Darknet, later admitted that for much of the time he’d also been working undercover for the entertainment industry.
“I guess you can call me a true double agent,” he said. “I lead a very comfortable double life.”
Source: 
TorrentFreak.com
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