The Italian Tax Police performed a raid in different Italian cities to fight a card-sharing network offering Sky Italia and Mediaset Premium packages, reports the AAPA.

Quoting Italian news sources, the Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance said that Sky Italia provided technical support for the operation. The operation took place last month.

The card sharing network operators offered service packages and television broadcasts for less than 80% of the legitimate offer price. The network also offered customer support 24 hours a day, seven days a week; on-line, by telephone and at home.

The investigation, which lasted about a year, resulted in seizing computer terminals connected to the network which was the base of the operations from where they decoded encrypted audiovisual signals and streamed in real time via the web to customers. Several servers, all located outside Italy, were used to “support” the quality of the distributed signals.

Meanwhile, Dutch content pirates were sentenced to 100 hours of community service, conditional imprisonment and probation.

Following the successful 2013 raid of five homes in Apeldoorn, Enschede, Vlagtwedde and the Hague, it was announced that the pirates arrested during these raids have been sentenced at the Zutphen courthouse, The Netherlands.

“Pay TV piracy will not be tolerated in The Netherlands, and it is our intent to ensure that these sentences dissuade others from illegal content distribution,” said Ger Laning of the Dutch Police.

Control word sharing piracy is one of many major threats posed to pay TV operators and broadcasters, which has dramatically increased with growing broadband penetration. Control word sharing occurs when a pirate steals and retransmits a regularly changing control word that is passed between a smart card and a set-top-box (STB), allowing subscribers to watch TV content they have not legitimately paid for. In this case, Irdeto was able to prepare detailed evidence regarding the control word sharing networks in question.