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international co-operation, he said
Scott Butler, CEO of the
that STOP’s idea was to try to take
Arabian Anti-Piracy Alliance,
the best practice from one country
described audiovisual piracy in his
and spread it thorough the rest.
region as “a big problem”, telling
“It’s difficult to take ideas from
Jones via Skype link that “any type
one place, but at least you can get
of piracy is a threat to the local
some ideas and some inspiration
economy. There will be no direct
as to what’s been successful in one
investment into an economy
country and what hasn’t. If you get
where they don’t feel secure. Any
the legislation up to a certain
type of piracy is bad; audiovisual
standard, that’s the first point,
piracy is particularly bad because
then you need to make sure you
it destroys the local creativity. In
educate your law enforcement to
the Middle East, I think that local
make sure that they actually think
creativity is behind the curve.” He
that this is worthwhile.”
noted “a big disparity” among the
According to Würgler, audiovifederal regimes in terms of the
sual pircay is not complicated
effectiveness of their corporate
crime. “This is very easy. It’s just a
efforts to combat the problem.
TV product as opposed to selling
coke or ecstasy. You don’t need to
confuse [law enforcement agencies] with the technology. They
just need to go out and do the
things we can help them with.
As for global collaboration, he
suggested that the benefit was that
you could take ‘Best Practice’ from
one territory and then introduce it
“This will greatly enhance our efficiency in the fight
against piracy.” Christine Maury-Panis, AAPA
to another, so you don’t have to
make the same mistakes in every
country and make sure you have
the right approach. “Knowledge is
the way to combat this, and the
more knowledge you have, the
better it is. We all want to make
sure the value chain is protected.”
ENFORCEMENT. Pascal Metrál,
for the Alianza Contra la Piratería
de Televisión Paga, founded in
January 2013, said the body had
been set up to fight piracy on all
fronts. “We have a target of two
enforcement actions in each South
American country. We have public
awareness campaigns, we train
law enforcement authorities and
prosecution authorities,” he
advised, pointing to successes that
included the destruction of 10,000
illegal set-top boxes.
“We try to ensure that the case
law generated in one country is
translated into others to generate
a standardised case law.”
According to Metrál, key-sharing
was currently the main threat. He
pointed to a tangible example of
an existing co-operation with
ABTA, the Brazilian pay-TV trade
association, where practical
matters, operational matters and
legal matters could be addressed.
8 Content Security Special
piracy. It provides a mechanism
for us to feed into that organisation so that it can be brought out
on a global scale,” he noted. He
expressed “one hundred per cent
support” for an informal alliance
of associations. “In fact, we
already do that with the Motion
Picture Alliance, the Business
Software Alliance and the
Entertainment Software Alliance
and the IIPA.”
Christine Maury-Panis, EVP
general counsel, Viaccess-Orca
and VP, AAPA, noted that AAPA’s
predecessor body AEPOC had
been set up “not exactly as a club,
but more or less where there were
that there was to be uniform
legislation applicable to all the EU
countries. It has taken a little bit
of time to be applied to the
various countries but there has
been some interesting case law
and convictions.”
Nevertheless, she suggested
that there was a need for clarification of the rules, such as the question of the attribution of responsibility. “Who is going to be responsible for tackling the problem? Is
it the content owner, is it the
broadcaster, is it the online website. These things have to be
clarified if we are to have new
effective legislation,” she stated.
AWARENESS. She pointed out
the role played by AAPA as part of
the EU Observatory on IP
Infringements under the auspices
of the Office for Harmonisation in
the Internal Market (OHIM). “We
belong to working committees.
“We have a target of two enforcement
actions in each South American country.”
Pascal Metrál, Alianza Contra la Piratería
de Televisión Paga
“We all want to make sure the
value chain is protected.”
David Würgler, STOP
“The UAE is by far
the best, having taken appropriate
action; other markets are yet to
raid the server.”
RIGHTS-HOLDERS. He argued
that rights-holders need, and really had a responsibility to set up, an
international mechanism that
focused purely on their infringement issues. “This has actually
happened within Hollywood,” he
noted, pointing to the role of the
Entertainment Software Alliance.
“I sincerely feel the pay-TV
right-holders, as a group, should
set up their own international
organisation on anti-piracy.”
He said that once you’ve set up
an international anti-piracy organisation – which he suggested
should come underneath the
umbrella of the International
Intellectual Property Alliance “a
very useful organisation which
feeds in to the US government and
other governments”, then you
would have collaboration across
the rights-holders to focus full
resources together in fighting
piracy. “It helps if organisations
such as ours can feed in information when we discover sources of
exchanges
between companies. What was
important was that several of
these companies were competitors,” she noted.
JOINT. “What we have added is
that now we have joint actions;
police actions, joint claims against
a major code-sharing network.
AAPA members, whether on the
side of the technology, or on the
side of the operators, have worked
together in this action,” she
advised. “We have joint intelligence; we are really for the first
time sharing intelligence and
sharing investigations across the
networks.This is what I would see
as major progress, a new approach
in the anti-piracy fight. It’s putting
all the information together and
from there deciding what should
be done in terms of legal claims or
organising a raid.”
She noted that Europe was one
of the first regions to introduce
legislation dedicated to anti-piracy back in 1988. “That was the
first time piracy was tackled
legally with a definition of what
was a pirate device. That was a
major step. The beauty of this is
We are looking to establish the
level of IP perception in Europe.
Research indicates this is not
very high, so we need to increase
awareness. What we want to see
is sharing: sharing information,
sharing intelligence because
that’s the key. At the end of the
day, the networks are the same,”
she concluded.
Cassells described the event as
“a first, important step in our
collective commitment to fight
audiovisual piracy. Each association has valuable intelligence
which can be utilised to support
all our members in their efforts to
bring pirates to court and stamp
out activities which damage businesses and consumers alike. We
want to build upon this network
and invite other associations with
the same goal to join us.”
Maury-Panis, said: “I am
proud that AAPA originated this
initiative and am pleased that
Nordic Content Protection STOP, CASBAA, the Arabian
Anti-Piracy Alliance and Alianza
have made it a reality. This will
greatly enhance our efficiency in
the fight against piracy. I hope
that other associations will join
us on this is a major step forward.”