Urged on by Hong Kong’s TVB, police in the Sydney suburb of Hurstville raided a shop selling set top boxes which allowed consumers to receive a full bouquet of illegal TV programming from internet servers in China.
Investigations continue, and court cases will result later, with the shop’s managers liable for penalties including large fines and up to 5 years in jail.
TVB’s complaint was based on its Chinese-language content (sold legally in Australia through a subscription-based service), but the pirate boxes could access full bouquets of programming coming from China. (For a start, forensic investigators identified – in addition to several TVB channels, full streams from CNN, ESPN, MTV, Discovery, National Geographic, HBO, Fox and BBC, as well as a large library of VoD programming including movies not yet released on legal DVDs.)
A full English-language report and photos can be viewed here
TVB also issued a (Chinese-language) press statement, which can be downloaded here