A new case of online piracy has been reported today by AMA’s Chairwoman, Ms. Armela Krasniqi. Referring to the latest illegal entity identified, fined and reported by AMA’s inspection teams, Krasniqi outlined the full history of tracking and blocking a case initially discovered in Kukës as an illegal IPTV broadcaster, which later transferred to other servers across Europe.
“The fight against piracy is won through partnership and teamwork”, wrote AMA’s Chairwoman, Armela Krasniqi, on the Authority’s official social media channels. She brought to the public’s attention the case of an illegal IPTV entity operating within the local internal network was identified in the city of Kukës. “The entity was sanctioned in accordance with Law no. 97/2013 “On Audiovisual Media”, as amended. The server was seized and the violator was fined 5 million ALL. A few days later in cooperation with the Economic and Financial Crime Investigation structures of the State Police, the same entity, now operating as a pirate OTT service and accessible via an Albanian public IP address, was blocked once again. The domain was submitted to AKEP for closure and AMA specialists referred the case to the Prosecutor’s Office”.
However, it appears that technology has complicated AMA inspectors work. The ability to broadcast through servers located outside Albania has increased the opportunities for rights violators in their attempts to operate within the Albanian market.
Following the seizure and sanction in Albania, the violator continued their illegal activity using servers located first in Germany and after being blocked there, in Romania as well.
“Thanks to the immediate cooperation with international partners, including Hetzner Online GmbH in Germany, the same Albanian entity was blocked again and the illegal activity was stopped’, Krasniqi wrote. “And today, after AMA teams discovered the same entity operating through servers based in Romania, we’ve established contact with NexonHost and are currently awaiting the termination of this new connection as well”.
AMA’s Chairwoman has urged the public to report any similar piracy cases to the Authority
