Press releases announcing the closure of another pirate site, more arrests and what that means for the entertainment industry are nothing out of the ordinary. In particularly busy periods, simply determining where one batch ends and another begins can present challenges.
However, in many cases, even the simplest reports have much more going on beneath the surface. An announcement released Monday by the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment is clear, fairly detailed, but also conservative in reporting on behind-the-scenes happenings.
The matter involves Thailand's oldest and probably largest torrent site, a platform described by America's most powerful rights holders as a priority law enforcement target for at least seven years. However, it is only now, 18 years after the site first launched, that local authorities have taken any visible action.
If policy changed recently in Thailand, there is no obvious indication of when it happened or what it might be. The official page to provide advice on illegal services in the police website It still doesn't work and there has been no mention of the known complications that are simmering in this particular case either.
ACE describes the main facts
The key details, as reported by ACE on Monday, are as follows:
The Economic Crimes Department (ECD) of the Royal Thai Police, with the support of the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), has raided four locations in Bangkok, Surin province and Surat Thani. Four Thai nationals have been detained and are expected to be formally charged with copyright offenses in the coming days.
Siambit.me was the largest torrent tracking site in Thailand, with average monthly visits of 5.5 million, providing access to a wide range of Hollywood, international and Thai content.
The site has been in operation since 2005 and is known to periodically change its domain to avoid detection. According to statements from the Royal Thai Police, Siambit.me had more than 100,000 VIP members and the operators earned approximately 1.5 million baht (US$41,000) monthly.
The 5.5 million visits reported here line up exactly with the data reported by SimilarWeb, so we'll leave that aside for now. The reference to 100,000 VIP members indicates those who pay a fee each month. The lowest monthly rate reported recently was just 99 baht and the highest was 499 baht, or roughly between $2.70 and almost $14.00 per month.
The highest monthly fee of $14.00 makes little or no sense in any context, while the claim that 1.5 million baht was generated each month could, in theory, suggest that around 15,000 members would pay 99 baht each one. If 100,000 members paid even the minimum fee each month, no figures from any source combine to produce a reasonable total, so perhaps more information will emerge to clarify the situation.
Images of police action emerge
The images that began to circulate at the end of last week seem to confirm that the authorities had good intelligence information. Photos like the one below of a server room appear to have been taken at the main suspect's home.
When trying to establish a chronology of the events reported a few days ago, a confusing picture emerged. In fact, to make any sense of these events we needed to go back, not just days, but several weeks.
Thai police and ACE took down sites in January
On January 19, 2024, we background provided in an ACE announcement detailing the closure of 27 Thailand-focused sites, each of which relies on a common infrastructure provided as a service by the IAMTHEME.com website.
Around January 17, agents from the Central Bureau of Investigation were preparing an operation to enforce the country's strict pornography laws; In Thailand it is illegal to distribute, possess or produce pornography.
The bureau's target was the alleged operator of numerous sites, including xxxporn678.com, 037movie-hd.com, dooball678.com, movie678.com, and 678-hd.com. The first domain appears to have specialized in illegal adult content, while the rest seemed to focus on pirated movies and pirated live football streams.
The common denominator of all sites was a) a dependence on the services offered by IAMTHEME.com and b) illegally offering pornography and/or illegally generating income from online gambling advertising.
Combinations like these are an effective way to attract Thai authorities, who will shut down the sites and arrest their operators. And that's exactly what happened here. The items seized included four computers, eight mobile phones and more than a dozen bank accounts.
The dominoes start to fall
Shortly after the operator of xxxporn678 and the other sites were arrested, police began investigating the operator of IAMTHEME. Around February 2, he was also arrested, most likely for similar reasons.
At some point, police determined that their latest suspect was getting his pornography and pirated movies from SiamBit or was otherwise connected to the site and/or its operator. That set off a series of events that led to Thailand's largest torrent site becoming the focus of ACE's announcement released on Monday.
A source who asked not to be identified said police initially expanded their investigation to identify the person responsible for SiamBit. Armed with a search warrant dated February 7 issued by a local court, on February 9 they attacked the home of a man in his thirties* suspected of leading the group that controls the site.
*The suspect is believed to be 38 or 40 years old.
According to authorities, SiamBit had 10,000 VIP members and together they paid around 1.5 million baht to their operators each month. To take stock, we have also seen references to '100,000 members' but without any mention of money. SiamBits tracker data obtained by TF shows a peak of almost a million pairs and reports more than 200,000 members.
The focus may end up being a monetary value, but it's not yet clear whether that will be related to pornography and gambling, copyright infringement, or both.
At least initially, police focused on alleged crimes under Article 287 of the Thai Penal Code. Article 287 makes it more than clear that any type of manipulation of pornographic content is a criminal offense, punishable by a fine, a prison sentence or both.
While we were able to positively identify the four main suspects by name and home address, details here are limited to their initials, place of arrest, alleged role, and reported age.
C.W.: Sai Mai District. SiamBit operator and famous professional racing driver (38/40)
P.B.: Chatuchak District. Financial Controller (54)
WNK: Surin Province. Website/System Administrator (42)
New south Wales: Surat Thani Province. Administrator, community manager (53)
Several images provided by authorities allegedly show the alleged SiamBits operator, but it is not entirely clear if they all show the same person.
In the top row, images one and two show the same person in the same location, wearing a light blue t-shirt and with their face blurred. However, the person with the obscured face in image three at the bottom appears to more closely match press images of the racing driver named as the main suspect.
That raises the question of why the person in image three is wearing completely different clothing than the suspect in image one and two.
Other apparent anomalies include the Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment. Making reference the Siambit.me domain, which as far as we can establish is in fact the main domain of the site.
Locally there appears to be increased interest in Siambit.io, which at the time of writing redirects to Google. Meanwhile, the .me variant currently redirects to a Telegram channel with over 18,700 members.
Thai authorities confirm that their interest in SiamBit arose due to complaints from companies in the film industry. In its statement released yesterday, the anti-piracy group said charges of copyright infringement are expected in the coming days.
