Sky Deutschland card sharing pirates convicted

Three criminal cases have issued fines and suspended prison sentences to operators of card sharing servers in Germany.

Card sharing allows illegal access to pay-TV services. These cases related to cardshareing for the Sky Deutschland satellite TV service.

The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA) reports one case resulted in a suspended prison sentence of 1 year and 6 months plus a fine of €2,000 being imposed on the principal offender of a card sharing operation. The court stated in its decision that the card sharing operation which had 423 users caused damage of €430,000, creating an income of €143,000 for the card sharing server operator and a loss to the fiscal authority of €34,000.

Another case decreed that card sharing activity was computer fraud on a commercial scale; the fraud being committed jointly with the users. The court cases against the users are being handled locally at the place of residence of the users: the first ones have already been concluded with the users being convicted.