Latin America. The International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy, IBCAP, is promoting a coordinated attack on copyright hackers in North America, ensuring that unauthorized services and retailers are held accountable through mass trials and that their platforms are shut down.
IBCAP, which represents more than 140 TELEVISION channels from Europe, Brazil, the Middle East and South Asia, along with the technical services provided by NAGRA, is proactively monitoring and identifying unauthorized video services, collecting evidence and assisting with legal action.
A Texas Federal Court awarded an IBCAP member $16,800,000 for intentional copyright infringement, a court order against the owner of the infringing sites, the transfer of 15 domains, including freetvall.com, and a determination on the use of outsourced service providers as hosts of websites and content delivery networks, CDN.
The Texas lawsuit follows a $2,100,000 lawsuit in Delaware Federal Court against East IPTV's hacked service for copyright infringement. An additional $600,000 was awarded to the CDN used by East IPTV to broadcast IBCAP member channels. But that doesn't end with the pecuniary lawsuits: the defendants were forced to transfer the service's domains and any future domains used to infringe copyright will also be deactivated. The East IPTV service has ended.
These recent legal victories add to the sequence of more than 20 successful lawsuits coordinated by IBCAP and filed by its members over the past five years. Lawsuits can include devastating pecuniary values against pirates and distributors and retailers in your distribution chain.
Recent examples include $25,350,000 against Shava and Cres IPTV, the amount of $1,600,000 against one of Shava's retailers in New York, or the lawsuit against a pirated services retailer in Florida that forced that retailer into bankruptcy and resulted in a $4,440,000 judgment. In addition to the financial impact, at the heart of almost all of these legal victories are court orders that extend to CDNs, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), and retailers, completely disabling the pirate network.
Chris Kuelling, chief executive of IBCAP, said: "We will work tirelessly with our members to end these services. If they fail to comply, all available legal measures will be considered and used as necessary, including seeking damages and broad legal actions that extend to CDN, ISP, retailers, and others. The enforcement of judgments against retailers resulted in the bankruptcy of these stores or individuals. To be clear, we will not only stop going after the 'pirates', but their 'crew members' who contribute to the process, such as retailers selling pirated services."
In all these cases, Nagra was instrumental in supporting IBCAP to identify pirate targets and collect the evidence needed to coordinate and take legal action.
