Thousands of magazines, newspapers and books would have been unlawfully disseminated through at least 17 Telegram channels. This is the hypothesis of the Bari Public Prosecutor's Office that has ordered an urgent preventive seizure, being carried out by the Guardia di Finanza, for crimes of money laundering, receiving stolen goods, abusive access to an IT or telematic system, theft and violation of the copyright law.
The provision concerns people in the process of identification who, "in competition with each other - explains the Prosecutor - by entering the computer systems of numerous publishing companies of magazines, newspapers and books protected by security measures, have stolen thousands of Pdf files of the aforementioned assets protected by copyright by illegally pouring them onto numerous channels of the instant messaging platform called Telegram, thus allowing a widespread as well as abusive free-to-air distribution of thousands of magazines, newspapers and books ".
The investigation, coordinated by Deputy Prosecutor Roberto Rossi, was initiated after the complaint by the Italian Federation of Newspaper Publishers (Fieg) on this phenomenon of digital piracy presented on 10 April to the Authority for Communications Guarantees (Agcom). "The investigations - adds the Prosecutor of Bari - continue to reconstruct the illicit turnover and identify the perpetrators of the crime as well as the criminal liability of the companies involved".