Journalists Torrent Freak told of an unusual business, which was recently discovered by one of the readers of the resource: in a typical shopping center in Ethiopia, a strange machine, outwardly reminiscent of a payment terminal or an ATM. As it turned out on closer inspection, the device openly sells illegal content.

"At the beginning of this year in All Mart (a local analogue of Walmart stores) a new automatic machine. In fact, it's just a monitor with a USB port, but presented in ATM format. It's called SwiftMedia, "explains the vigilant reader. - In fact, you come to a very large store, go to the machine and insert a USB-drive into it. The screen turns on, and you can select movies from a huge archive ».

Needless to say, there is no question of any legality of content, DRM protection and copyrights of speech here. Prices also do not resemble the prices of legitimate services: the selection of films can be downloaded for 25, 50 and 100 birr (1-3 US dollars), and individual films will cost only a few tens of cents. Basically, the cost of films depends on the date of their appearance on the screen.

A reader who finds a strange machine assumes that people who own a machine simply download torrents for days on end, and then add them to the SwiftMedia catalog, since in the vending machine there are even novelties that have recently appeared on the screens of cinemas (it is necessary to assume that these are only "screens" ).

According to him, in Ethiopia before such illegal activities, nobody cares, since the government of the country has much more serious problems.

Journalists Torrent Freak found that the machine, apparently, belongs to the company Escape Computing. Back in 2016, this company was looking for experts to work with SwiftMedia, which also suggests that the company serves far more than one "pirate terminal". Unfortunately, all attempts of journalists to directly contact representatives of this unusual illegal business have not been successful.