Department of Special Investigation officials have shut down several major websites that illegally streamed movies and football matches with links to online gambling and pornography.
More than 120 officers were ivolved in the operation, with teams sent to search 19 targeted locations in Bangkok, Nonthaburi, Pathum Thani, Suphan Buri, Chiang Mai and Lampang on Thursday.
The move followed complaints that several websites were violating copyright by streaming movies and live football matches.
There were also advertisements for pornographic movies on the websites, and illegal links to online football gambling.
Among the websites were sakkarinsai8.com, which provided streaming services to Doo4k.tv, Movie2free, bigapp.tv and other websites, charging fees ranging from 70,000-100,000 baht a month, DSI chief Paisit Wongmuang told a news conference.
Movie2free was the largest online movie website in Thailand, with more than than 25 million visitors a month. It provided free online swfilms, but ran pornographic film advertisements and had illegal links to football gambling sites. Membership fees were 250-300 baht a month, Pol Col Paisit said.
The website bigapp.tv had 8,000 members and a Myanmar national was hired to open bank accounts to receive money transfers from those members, he said.
Doo4k.tv provided services to its agents in four regions across the country and sold Android TV boxes containing pirated applications.
Evidence collected during the raids included lists of the website administrators and those who registered them, computer devices, signal receiving boxes and other equipment.
The DSI chief said the websites caused more than 4 billion baht damage to copyright owners.
Pol Lt Col Wichai Suwanprasert, director of the DSI’s Bureau of Technology and Cyber Crime, said 20 people were involved in running the websites, illegally streaming pirated movies and football matches. They were mostly young people holding a master’s degree in computer engineering.
Over the past 2-3 years, their websites would have generated about 300 million baht in revenue.
The DSI would file legal complaints against those involved, Pol Lt Col Wichai said. Authorities had already suspended the websites’ operations.