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The company tasked with running Piracy Shield, Italy's controversial IPTV-blocking system, is looking for a new recruit. The successful candidate will spend weekdays, plus an hour during most weekends, monitoring pirate streams and then taking them down. Surprisingly, the job requires no experience and no in-depth skills, although knowing what an IP address does will be seen as a positive. iptv2-sFor less demanding pirates, a free movie, TV show, or live stream amounts to nothing more than the base media. In common with users of legal platforms, how that content made it to their screens is mostly of no concern. Yet if ‘How It’s Made’ had an episode revealing what goes on behind the scenes to keep sites online, in the face of constant efforts to shut them down, that might be an eye-opener. In some respects setting up a site is easier today than ever before. On the downside, pirates routinely expect more; some have become openly aggressive critics, treating pirate sites no differently than they would an underperforming retailer or airline. It’s not unusual to hear comments suggesting they will vote with their feet (but not necessarily with their wallets) should standards and overall quality fall below acceptable levels. The fact that behind the scenes anti-piracy companies are using all available tools, to make running a site as unrewarding, frustrating, and oftentimes as unprofitable as possible, means almost nothing to the general masses. At least until everything suddenly stops working, most commonly due to some kind of blocking. At that point, nothing is more important. Really? Haven’t these people got anything better to do? ™ (some pirates, every week, since 1999) Getting Paid to Watch Pirate Streams At Work? A job listing that appeared on LinkedIn and several other sites this week offers a glimpse into pirate life from the opposing direction. The potential employer is listed as ‘Legal Forensic Tech’ which under the circumstances is probably a reference to SP Tech, the company tasked with running Italy’s Piracy Shield blocking system. The position of ‘Super Junior Developer’ will see the successful candidate join the team to “continue the fight” against IPTV providers and web-based streaming services, offering pirated Serie A and Serie B football matches. “During the week, [Super Junior] will be responsible for monitoring pirate streaming networks, and during the matches on weekends (3/4 weekends per month required, for a total of one hour per day, not for the whole weekend), to take them down using Piracy Shield,” the listing explains. Getting paid to watch pirate networks all week might sound like easy money, but the importance of monitoring streams when matches aren’t being aired shouldn’t underestimated. It’s during these periods that most pirate services and their servers are logged as suppliers of infringing content and therefore subject to blocking measures. There’s also the not insignificant task of identifying services that were previously blocked but due to circumvention, need to be blocked again. No Special Skills or Experience Needed There’s no question this is an important job, but information in the listing doesn’t always seem to reflect that. The position pays a gross annual salary (known as RAL) of €24,000 (~$26,000), considerably less than the national average of €32,500. It’s also offered on a so-called co.co.co. basis, meaning that the successful candidate won’t be considered a full employee or even self-employed, but will get to decide when work gets done. Also of note is the employer’s emphasis on the level of experience required; specifically, it’s fine if the applicant has none whatsoever. Then, to a background of some serious blocking blunders involving Cloudflare earlier this year, there’s the matter of matching the applicant’s skill set to the expectations of their potential employer. (see update at the bottom of this article) piracy-shield-job “We are ready and willing to teach everything there is to know about our world, all we need is someone with the grit and passion,” the listing adds. “This experience is preparatory to becoming part of the development team of our products that automate these projects. The stack we work in is mainly Golang, Python and React, on which we will train you.” 100s of Millions At Stake vs. Piracy Shield’s Pittance? The listing confirms that the specific project being worked on is anti-piracy software for the football league, although Piracy Shield gets a specific mention elsewhere. As a result, the company works closely with DAZN, Sky, and others involved in football match broadcasting. “We are a very small team, very close-knit and very helpful to each other,” the listing notes, reporting a two-member ops team, two junior staff, and a coordinator. At the head of the company there’s a CEO and two “super-seniors.” One is a forensics expert, investigator, and an expert witness. The other “deals with the development part in Go and is a former pirate.” It’s often claimed that pirates make huge sums of money but, in the end, being a pirate doesn’t pay. Hopefully that isn’t the case here, not least since working on Piracy Shield is just part of the company’s overall business. Interestingly, relying solely on the revenue generated by the Piracy Shield contract might not even be sustainable. For the “adapative and evolutionary maintenance services of the Piracy Shield Platform” for a period of 12 months ending December 2024, SP TECH S.R.L. will receive roughly the same amount of money Juventus pays Dušan Vlahović for a single day’s work. The Piracy Shield job listing can be found here Update: SP TECH S.R.L sent us the following statement, clarifying that the job offer was erroneously posted by a third party. “SP Tech Legal s.r.l. hereby states that the job advertisement referenced in the article ‘Piracy Shield is Hiring a Pirate IPTV Blocker, No Skills or Experience Needed’ was erroneously published by the recruiting company Deckx s.r.l. without any assignment from SP Tech Legal s.r.l. itself. The text and content of the advertisement are, therefore, in no way attributable to SP Tech Legal s.r.l., which further specifies that it has promptly taken legal action against Deckx s.r.l. to protect its rights, which have been severely infringed by this unlawful conduct.”

Authorities in Argentina have launched a criminal investigation into a major pirate sports streaming operation. The alleged mastermind, described as a 'pirate streaming consultant', was arrested in the province of Mendoza. In addition to the arrest and an accompanying raid, the authorities also ordered ISPs to block more than 50 pirate streaming domains. mud ball footballWhen Argentina won the FIFA World Cup in 2022, the entire country was watching. Many people tuned in to legal broadcasts and, at the same time, illegal streams were buzzing too. With an audience of many millions, piracy is unquestionably popular in Argentina. Rightsholders are happy with that, but they’ve also complained about a lack of enforcement against pirate streaming services. The tide appears to have turned recently, in part because site blocking tools are improving. Last year, local anti-piracy outfit Alianza obtained the country’s first dynamic site blocking order, requiring local ISPs to restrict access to thirty sports streaming sites. While the blocking order had an effect, plenty of piracy alternatives remained available. This prompted Alianza to refer more sites to the local authorities, including a person of interest, who is believed to play a pivotal role. 50+ New Site Blocks, One Arrest The Argentine Justice Department followed up on this lead and this week ordered local Internet providers to block access to more than 50 pirate sites. The sites use the popular sports streaming brands “Futbol Libre” and “Megadeportes”. megadportes A full list of domain names hasn’t been published, but it would make sense that the most visited ones, including futbollibretv.fr, futbollibretv.pe, futbollibre.futbol and megadeportestv2.online are included. The Megadeportes domains are of particular interest. The alleged founder and operator of a ‘ring’ of these sites was arrested in the province of Mendoza by the Specialized Prosecutor’s Unit for the Investigation of Cybercrimes, then transported 1,200 kilometers to Buenos Aires for questioning. ‘The Consultant’ The arrest is part of a criminal case and also involved a raid, during which computers and other evidence related to the crimes was seized. The unnamed suspect stands accused of violating copyright law for his part in the sports streaming operations. The allegations against the suspect go further than simply operating streaming sites. According to Alianza President Jorge Bacaloni, the man also consulted for others, providing them with the necessary information to run their own pirate sports streaming portals. “The defendant was engaged in supplying content and programming tools to other pirate operators, such as access codes to violate the security mechanisms implemented by the companies, used to feed their services. “He was a kind of consultant for the administration of illegal streaming services,” Bacaloni adds in his commentary on the case. “Kahsad’s Traces” According to a local report from Infobae, the authorities mentioned that the suspect used the alias “Kahsad”, under which he apparently founded the “Megadeportes” pirate sites. Somewhat unusual is the prominent mention of a free Google-hosted blog, kahsadtvonline.blogspot.com, where “illegal access” to sports streams including “Futbol Libre” was offered. From the local report (translated) kahsad At the time of writing, this outdated blog is still online, although it doesn’t look all that advanced. In fact, there’s no sign of any new updates in recent years. The only links we see are a few basic non-functioning embeds, which could have been wiped out by Google through a takedown notice. In our search for information we found some other “Kahsad” and “Megadeportes” traces, but these don’t provide additional clarity. Google searches indeed link the two names together. For example, they point to a GitHub profile with 5 followers and a GitHub-hosted sports streaming site with over a million monthly visits that’s currently offline. Whether these are indeed connected to the suspect is unknown. Perhaps more information will become available when the prosecution progresses. Local authorities are taking the piracy problem seriously and appear willing to act. Whether the effort will be sufficient to make a serious dent in pirate streaming numbers remains to be seen.