The Danish police has raided 30 addresses in Jutland in an effort to stop a ring of card sharing piracy.
The public prosecutor for the Serious Economic and International Crime unit (Særlig Økonomisk og International Kriminalitet, or SØIK), popularly known as the Serious Fraud Office, has said that it seized large quantities of illegal material and arrested 27 people during a coordinated action on Thursday, January 23.
The network supposedly consists of 25 people with two more people designated a the ring leaders. The network served around 35 people or more.
The maximum penalty for illegal card sharing , according to Danish law can lead to up to one-and-a half year in prison, in particularly serious cases even up to to six years in prison.
The penalty for usewrs in a card sharing ring can go up to DKK 20,000 (EUR2,680).
“Police and prosecutors are looking very seriously at this kind of misuse of IT equipment to illegally gain access to pay-TV,” said deputy public prosecutor Erling Vestergaard in a statement, “The TV industry loses millions each year because of such networks of illegal so-called card sharing.”
Speaking for the Stop: Nordic Content Protection organisation, director David Würgler told local press” “We are pleased that the police have done great work in this area and think it’s an important signal that the police are going out with an effort like this.”
“It is impossible to say how big the problem is, as it takes place in secret, but our position is that every single person who uses an illegal service is one too many. We are looking seriously at it,” he added, “It ‘s also about making sure that the problem does not become too large. It is a continuous effort to keep it down.”
The official press release can be found on this website (available in Danish only).
