Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance launches
December 17, 2012
By Colin Mann
The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance (AAPA), the successor body to AEPOC, the European Association for the Protection of Encrypted Works and Services (Association Européenne pour la Protection des Œuvres et services Cryptés) has been launched at the HbbTV Symposium in Paris. Plans for the revised Alliance and focus were exclusively revealed by advanced-television.com July 15.
AAPA represents the major players in the pay-TV industry, including the largest technology security vendors. The Alliance’s mission is to support the fight against piracy where this involves the development, promotion, distribution, application or use of technologies resulting in the unauthorised use of protected audiovisual content.
Building upon the work of its predecessor body, AAPA’s role is to facilitate the co-ordination of intelligence and anti-piracy activities amongst its members and to interact with EU institutions to ensure that there is effective legislation to achieve successful enforcement action.
According to AAPA Vice-President Christine Maury-Panis, General Counsel at Viaccess, piracy never goes away. “As new technologies emerge and new ways of distributing audiovisual content become more popular, it is crucial that we have all the possible tools to work with collaboratively against the persistent threat of piracy, which causes enormous damage to jobs in the creative and other sectors. AAPA provides an efficient industry alliance which is able to support the fight against piracy of paid content delivered via the set top box, mobile phone, tablet, etcetera.”
Sheila Cassells, AAPA Executive Director, launching AAPA, noted that at IBC two years ago , a discussion about the security issues surrounding connected TV had been started. “Since then, AAPA members have been active in developing security for smart TVs, etcetera and making OTT content available. We need to ensure that all stakeholders recognise the importance of implementing and maintaining content security robustly and this Symposium provides an opportunity to continue to reinforce this message,” she stated.
The current AAPA members are BSkyB, Conax, Eutelsat, INSIDE Secure, Irdeto, Liberty Global, Melita, Nagra, NDS, Nova, Open Tech, Pace, Sky Deutschland, Sky Italia, Verimatrix, Viaccess, Ziggo and Zon.