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Hypocrisy unleashed: a public call to CNA

, 10 min read · Citește în română

Fuck me, bro, this is hypocrisy unleashed.

So some people can run without a licence and broadcast online illegally, while others have to play the fool and obey like puppies, because in Romania what counts is who has the bigger dick and more nerve.

Here's an example. ABN, short for Ade Broadcast Network, a network of kids playing at being a TV station, reported TOONMAX to CNA, Romania's broadcasting regulator. But guess what I found when I checked? They don't have a licence either. They broadcast anyway and act like a media empire, running on a VPS from CLOUD CENTER SRL.

I can't stand this kind of injustice, so this is a public call to CNA. Take note that ademedia isn't a first-time offender. It has been warned before not to broadcast illegally.

So I don't understand why you forgive some, while others are forced to shut down for fear of your incredibly large fines. Or are you just taking advantage of the decency and obedience TOONMAX showed?

And this next part isn't for CNA, it's for ABN and their Pokémon: please, don't try to take this blog down. You don't stand a chance. I'm not WordPress, and I'm not some second-rate Romanian institution either, so what I write on this site stays here. And if I ever lose the .ro, I'll come back on another domain and nothing I say can be censored. We live with freedom of speech (I hope).

There are 3 or 4 more ONLINE TV stations broadcasting the same way, without a licence, but I'm not the kind of person who hurts people. I won't name them. Good for them for being smart enough that nobody knows who they are.

What happened

On 20 October, after CNA's meeting that same day, TOONMAX Romania suspended its online stream indefinitely. In their announcement they say they want to come back as a linear TV channel, on cable and IPTV, with every legal requirement met, and they ask their fans not to insult CNA. That's what decency looks like. The announcement is here: toonmaxtv.net/blog/2026-10-20

Who is behind TOONMAX

TOONMAX Romania isn't a stream someone started from their bedroom. It's part of UGC Media, the media division of United Global Cloud, a private technology, infrastructure and media group founded on 22 October 2025.

The group started with a simple idea: connect independent hosting and infrastructure providers without taking control away from them. Every member keeps its own network, hardware, customers and prices, and together they gain direct interconnection, better routing and shared protection. That became UGC Network, the interconnection side. There's also BANATSYNC, the group's hosting brand, closed for now. Media came later, as a natural extension of the group, not as a separate business.

And UGC Media says on its own site how it works: it builds its audience slowly, one channel at a time, under brands it controls end to end and answers for. In other words, exactly the kind of people who want to do things by the book.

And it's not just one channel. The group had two more channels ready. Sadly, they won't launch now either, because people are afraid of these fines, and rightly so. So it isn't one channel that went dark, it's three, and two of them never even got to broadcast.

To make the irony complete: TOONMAX shut down on 20 October 2026, two days before the group's first birthday.

So the ones who respected the institution shut down. The ones who reported them are still broadcasting.

TOONMAX in numbers

TOONMAX published their numbers today, taken from their own server statistics, not from marketing estimates. And they only go back to 30 June, because older data has been deleted, so the real numbers are even higher.

  • Over 104,000 visits in 115 days, about 900 unique visitors a day on average.
  • The best day was 21 August, with 2,505 unique visitors.
  • Over 12,000 hours of cartoons watched, more than 16 months of nonstop broadcasting.
  • Over 32 TB of video sent to viewers.
  • Viewers in 60 countries. Almost 90% from Romania, followed by the UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland and France.
  • 426 accounts created, 132 of them in the first 48 hours after access started requiring an account.

They had more viewers than most cartoon TV channels in Romania. AND THAT SAYS A LOT FOR A FAN-MADE PROJECT.

So you have to wonder: wasn't that exactly what bothered someone? As long as you're small and nobody sees you, nobody reports you. But when a fan-made project ends up watched by thousands of people and has a bigger audience than others, suddenly someone remembers the law. I can't prove what was going through the heads of the people who filed the complaint. But it's hard to believe it's a coincidence that the complaint came exactly when TOONMAX had become "too popular".

And it wasn't a playlist on repeat. Behind it are almost two years of work, done by a handful of people, out of passion and in their spare time. They had their own broadcast system, built by themselves, running nonstop with a programme schedule, "Up next" announcements and idents between shows, just like a real TV station. A site in 9 languages, a special Smart TV interface, and a phone app ready to launch that never got to see the light of day.

What the law says, in short

So it's clear I'm not making this up, here's what Romania's Audiovisual Law no. 504/2002 says in its current form.

A TV channel on the internet needs a licence. Art. 1 point 2 says a television service is a linear service, with a programme schedule and a logo, "regardless of the technical means used". Art. 50 para. (3) says broadcasting over any electronic communications network, other than digital terrestrial television, can only happen on the basis of an audiovisual licence. The internet is such a network. The rule came into the law through Law no. 190/2022, the law that brought the EU directive 2018/1808 into Romanian law.

The licence alone isn't enough. Art. 58 para. (1) says you can only start broadcasting after you also receive the audiovisual authorisation decision. The licence lasts 9 years (art. 55).

Video on demand is different. If you don't have a linear programme, just a library of clips people choose themselves, the law only asks for a notification to CNA at least 7 days before you start (art. 74 para. 5). No licence.

What a mistake costs

Art. 90 para. (1) letter k) punishes providing a media service without a licence or without notification. The fine is between 22,000 and 440,000 lei (art. 90 para. 2), roughly 4,400 to 88,000 euros.

Now the part that makes you think. These amounts are new. Government Decision no. 830/2026 raised the fines in broadcasting starting on 19 October 2026. Until then, the same offence meant between 10,000 and 200,000 lei. TOONMAX shut down on 20 October, the day after the increase. It's not hard to see why they were scared.

The law also has a gentle option, though. If CNA considers the effects minor, it can issue a public summons to comply (somație publică de intrare în legalitate) instead of a fine (art. 90 para. 3). And any sanction can be challenged at the court of appeal within 15 days (art. 93 para. 3).

A licence isn't impossible, but it's built for companies

It can be done. CNA's 2025 activity report says 12 new TV licences over electronic communications networks were granted in 2025, one of them for online broadcasting.

But look at what you need, according to CNA decisions 277/2013 and 405/2015. For the licence: a legal entity (at least a sole trader, an individual or a family business), an editorial project, a technical project, a logo, trade registry papers and a tax certificate. For the authorisation: a one-week programme schedule, an equipment list, the lease for the studio space and a staff list.

For a TV company, that's normal paperwork. For a passion project, or for kids playing at being a TV station, it's a wall.

And where the fuck are they supposed to get the money?

This is where the real problem starts. Getting the money for a company isn't hard. You set up TOONMAX ROMANIA SRL or TOONMAX NETWORK SRL, file the papers with CNA, and up to that point it's just bureaucracy.

But the CNA licence is only the right to broadcast. To have something to broadcast, you also need the broadcast rights for the cartoons, bought from whoever owns them. And cartoon licences cost up to 250,000 euros. For a project nobody funded except its founders, out of their own pockets.

And to top it off, others profited from the idea they started and made tens of thousands of euros from it. The ones who worked with their own money are now shut down, the ones who latched onto the idea cashed in.

So TOONMAX isn't someone refusing to get legal. It's someone the law asks to climb a wall worth hundreds of thousands of euros, while others broadcast happily without climbing anything. And that's exactly why the rule has to apply the same way to everyone. Otherwise it isn't a law anymore, it's a weapon: you use it on whoever you want, whenever you want.

Where the hypocrisy is

The law is the same for everyone. Art. 50 para. (3) makes no difference between a big channel and a small project. If TOONMAX had to stop, the same rule applies to anyone broadcasting linear TV on the internet without a licence, including the ones who reported it.

CNA knows how to be gentle, when it wants to. On 3 March 2026, CNA gave only a public summons, not a fine, to PHG Media-Invest for YouTube and TikTok channels that were running without the notification the law requires. Good. Except the small ones should get the same understanding, not just the ones with a name.

The line isn't clear either. The EU directive our law comes from says, in recital 21, that the rules don't apply to activities that are primarily non-economic and don't compete with television, such as private websites and content made by users for communities of interest. CNA itself quotes recital 21 in its 2025 report. Only Romanian law doesn't say anywhere, explicitly, where a hobby ends and television begins. When the line isn't written down, fear decides. And fear only stops the honest ones. UNITED GLOBAL CLOUD is the proof: three channels stopped by fear, not by any fine.

What I'm asking CNA for

  • Apply the law the same way to everyone. When you get a complaint, check who's making it too.
  • Say publicly and clearly what an "online TV station" means to you, and where the line is for small, non-commercial passion projects.
  • Use the summons before fines of hundreds of thousands of lei, the way you did with others.
  • Give small projects that want to be legal, like TOONMAX, a realistic path, instead of leaving them to choose between shutting down and taking the risk.

I'm not asking for anyone to be shut down. I'm only asking for the rule to be the same for everyone.

Sources

Posted on xtq.ro on 29 October 2026. © 2026 xTQ. All rights reserved. Republishing is allowed only with this copyright notice and credit to xtq.ro as the source.