In related cases, a federal district court and a federal bankruptcy court, both in Florida, have ordered Hisham Manse Ibrahem and Nezar Saeed Hammo, US-based sellers of the pirate service ATN, to pay $32,100,000 (€29.8m) in combined damages for wilful copyright infringement. The cases were filed by DISH Network, a member of trade body the […]

Film and television content security initiative the Trusted Partner Network (TPN) is launching an enhanced programme with a new membership model, application and cloud content security assessments, and the TPN+ platform. TPN, which is fully owned by the Motion Picture Association (MPA), is leveraging the updated MPA Content Security Best Practices v5.0 to expand its […]

A police operation that disrupts websites illegally providing access to copyrighted content stopped £6 million of advertising revenue from UK traffic reaching these websites in 2022.  Operation Creative was launched by the Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police in 2013 to tackle the funding of illegal streaming websites, which have […]

Clinton Hartland, licensee of The Watering Trough pub in Walsall, West Midlands has been found guilty in his absence of two offences of dishonest reception of a television transmission. In this case, Hartland televised Sky Sports football matches, with the intent to avoid payment of the applicable commercial subscription charge. Sky Sports is only available […]

Research from software provider Synamedia analysing the impact of sports and entertainment piracy across seven countries and the potential revenues that would result from converting pirate viewers to legal subscribers, finds the value of entertainment piracy is three times bigger than sports piracy and that the fragmentation of rights across more services is now affecting […]

The Police Intellectual Property Crime Unit (PIPCU) at City of London Police and anti-piracy agency Web Capio have seized domains that illegally hosted copyrighted content by YouTube supergroup the Sidemen. The domains, somuchcontent.com and sidemencommunity.co.uk, were linked to a site that hosted videos by the Sidemen, including those only available to watch with a subscription. […]

Trade body the International Broadcaster Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP) has reported key 2022 achievements in protecting its members’ content and removing pirate services from the US market and worldwide. Through the continued development of its proprietary software that enables automated scanning of set-top boxes (STB) and automated sending of takedown notices, the IBCAP lab more […]

Watching illegal live content on TV was still widespread in 2022 and has actually increased noticeably in recent years. Since the economic losses are at the expense of commercial media organisations, the effect of this is to weaken media and opinion diversity in Germany. This is the conclusion of a study commissioned by the Vaunet […]

The number of pay-TV subscribers in 20 MENA countries will increase from 17.32 million in 2022 to 19.20 million in 2028, according to the Middle East and North Africa Pay TV Forecasts report from analyst firm Digital TV Research. Legitimate pay-TV penetration will remain at only 19 per cent. IPTV subscribers overtook pay satellite TV […]

Reed Hastings has become Executive Chairman of Netflix, with Greg Peters stepping up from COO to become Ted Sarandos’s co-CEO, and a member of the Netflix board. The news came as the streaming giant revealed Q4 2022 numbers that exceeded its forecast. “I want to thank Reed for his visionary leadership, mentorship and friendship over […]