Advanced Television

Comcast, Viacom join anti-piracy coalition

October 22, 2019

By Colin Mann

The Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE), the global coalition dedicated to protecting the dynamic legal market for creative content and reducing online piracy, has confirmed the addition of Comcast and Viacom as members. While NBCUniversal and Paramount Pictures were already ACE members, the addition of their parent companies will strengthen ACE’s comprehensive approach to disrupting a piracy ecosystem that harms creators. Comcast is the first Internet Service Provider (ISP) to join ACE.

“We are excited to have Comcast and Viacom join ACE – our leading global content protection organisation,” declared Charles Rivkin, Chairman and CEO of the Motion Picture Association. “As the parent companies of two of our original members, they have been supporters of our efforts and numerous successes, but now as members, they will strengthen the legal and operational work we’re able to do to reduce the threat of piracy and support creators.”

ACE was founded in June 2017 by 30 creative companies who sought to expand ongoing, cooperative efforts to reduce the threat and prevalence of online piracy. Last year alone, there were an estimated 5.4 billion downloads of pirated films and television shows and 21.4 billion total visits to streaming piracy sites worldwide. This conservatively costs $29.2 billion to as much as $71 billion annually in lost domestic revenues, according to a recent study from the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Global Innovation Policy Center. Piracy also harms consumers – one-third of pirate sites target them with malware that can lead to a range of problems, including identify theft and financial loss, according to a report by Digital Citizens Alliance.

Since its inception, ACE has achieved successful litigations against piracy device sellers and providers of unauthorised content and their operators such as Vader Streams, SetTVNow, Tickbox, and Dragon Box, and collaborated with law enforcement investigations and actions around the world. ACE draws upon the global anti-piracy resources of the Motion Picture Association (MPA) in concert with the internal anti-piracy expertise of the coalition members.

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