Numerous households in South Africa using the Waka TV service could soon find themselves in the crosshairs of the law if DStv follows through on a threat to crack down on illegal pirate streaming services.

DStv parent company MultiChoice recently scored two significant victories against people facilitating the operation of illegal streaming services in South Africa.

On Wednesday, 5 June 2024, it announced the arrest of a “key suspect” following the raid of a Waka TV facility in the Western Cape on 31 May.

While there are several IPTV streaming services illegally offering live DStv channels to South Africans at a fraction of their regular prices, Waka TV has emerged as one of the most popular options.

That arrest was followed shortly by the announcement of a second apprehension on Thursday, 6 June, of a person allegedly selling modified Android boxes used to access illegal IPTV streaming services.

The broadcaster maintains that content piracy is a significant threat to local broadcasters and the creative industry as a whole due to its impact on revenue.

The June 2024 arrests are not the first high-profile cases against individuals implicated in piracy of DStv’s content.

MultiChoice released statements on various convictions of people involved in illegal streaming services over the past few years, including:

• November 2022 — Capetonian Jordan Mott fined R60,000 after receiving a wholly-suspended seven-year jail sentence for infringing MultiChoice’s copyright by selling access to pirated DStv content.
• November 2022 — UK citizen Lee Whaley fined R120,000 after receiving a wholly-suspended five-year jail sentence for a similar copyright infringement offence.
• October 2023 —  Pieter Lombard fined R24,000 after receiving a wholly suspended five-year jail sentence for having 12 illegal streaming devices in his possession.

MultiChoice is also proactively combatting piracy in the broader entertainment industry.

MultiChoice subsidiary Irdeto is best known for its Denuvo copyright protection software, which is used in many of the world’s popular games and digital game storefronts.

Irdeto’s broadcasting cybersecurity anti-piracy director, Frikkie Jonker, said that pirate streaming networks posed a significant threat to the commercial distribution of content.

“Digital piracy, far from being a fringe activity, has become a widespread practice that transcends demographics and geographies, challenging the norms of intellectual property rights,” Jonker said.

“Acts of piracy, ranging from illegal streaming to black-market digital piracy, are forms of copyright infringement that undermine the efforts of content providers and the software industry.”

More arrests coming

While MultiChoice has labelled the arrest of the Waka TV “key suspect” a breakthrough, the broadcaster is not stopping there.

MultiChoice said it was working with police to investigate the “thousands of individuals” connected to the Waka TV pirate network.

“Resellers supporting the pirate operation are also under investigation,” the company said. “This collaborative effort aims to dismantle the entire network and bring all perpetrators to justice.”

MulitChoice said that the South African Police Service’s Cybercrime Unit would analyse the equipment seized in the raid and analyse it to provide additional insights into the extent of the pirate network.

“More arrests are imminent,” the company said.

Waka TV provides access to over 220 channels, many of which are legally only available on DStv, for a monthly fee of $8.00 (R144) or an annual price of $80.00 (R1,439).

Waka TV users can either choose to pay the provider directly or work through a reseller in South Africa.

Users can also buy a monthly voucher code from a reseller called Shenzhen Zaiyun Technology on Chinese e-commerce platform Alibaba.

In addition to Waka TV, the Alibaba seller offers gift codes for accessing pirate streaming services in other countries.

Aside from the legal ramifications of using the service, there is another danger inherent to using these streaming services.

With the services themselves being run by criminals, there is no guarantee that they would not start deducting incorrect amounts from people’s accounts or cards.

MyBroadband found a popular community Facebook group in Pretoria in which several complained that they were charged for a free trial of the service, and the only way they could get the charges to stop was to cancel their bank card.

Waka TV also sells a cheaper My Family Cinema package without live TV but access to numerous copyrighted movies and TV shows on demand.

My Family Cinema itself is a form of media server software similar to Plex.

While neither is illegal on their own, using them to host and share copyrighted material without a licence agreement is illegal.