A trio of domains that allegedly distributed pirated content, including movies, TV shows, video games and other content was seized by the U.S. government as part of a globally coordinated crackdown on copyright infringement, the Justice Department said Friday.
The sites — zamunda.net, arenabg.com and zelka.org — were among the most popular domains in Bulgaria and likely generated significant revenue from ads, officials said. Seizure notices are currently displayed on all three sites warning visitors that illegal distribution of copyrighted works is a crime.
Officials said the U.S.-registered domains received tens of millions of visits a year, including one that often ranked in the top 10 most visited sites in Bulgaria. Multiple Bulgarian agencies assisted with the investigation alongside Homeland Security Investigations, the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of Mississippi and the National Intellectual Property Rights Coordination Center.
The sites offered visitors thousands of infringed works, resulting in millions of downloads that carry a collective retail value of millions of dollars, prosecutors said.
The seizures were announced just days after similar actions in Italy where police seized three allegedly illegal IPTV services that distributed pirated content to millions of users. The operation, dubbed “Switch off,” dismantled IT infrastructure the unnamed sites used to distribute content owned by Sky, Dazn, Mediaset, Amazon Prime, Netflix, Paramount, Disney+ and other media companies, officials said.
Italian police said they found evidence linking the IPTV sites to 31 members of a transnational organized crime group and searched the suspects’ residences in Italy. Authorities identified an additional 14 suspects in the United Kingdom, Spain, Romania and Kosovo.
“The suspects adopted advanced anonymization strategies that have materialized in a series of operations, such as investing in cryptocurrencies, the fictitious heading of assets and the establishment of fictitious companies,” Italian State Police said in a statement.
The actions in Italy were announced about a week before the country hosts the Winter Olympics in Milan, which gets underway Feb. 6.