Get tough to deter pirate pay-TV viewers

Date: 11/12/1997

By Leyla Linton

VIEWERS curled up in front of their television sets on cold winter nights, enjoying access to pay-TV thanks to hacked decoding devices, may be watching on borrowed time.

A new anti-piracy association is stepping up its campaign for an EU-wide clamp-down on counterfeit devices and wants those who use them to be taken to court.

As a new era of digital television takes off, the need for action to prevent pirates from illegally producing, marketing and selling devices which allow people to view pay-TV without paying for it is becoming ever more urgent.

AEPOC, l'Association Européenne pour la Protection des Oeuvres et Services Cryptés, was set up less than a year ago by around 30 European pay-TV companies, programme-makers and equipment providers to lobby for a tougher EU anti-piracy directive.

Its chairman Jean Grenier is not entirely pleased with the European Commission's plans to tackle the piracy of pay-TV because they would only criminalise the suppliers, and not the users. “Certainly we are happy to see the issue recognised as important, but we are not totally satisfied with the text as it is,” he says.

Grenier would like to see sanctions against individual viewers, perhaps in the form of a fine or a prison sentence.

He does not want to appear too harsh and jokes that it is not a question of chopping off hands, as Islamic law would dictate for theft, or trying to put a lot of people in prison. But he insists some kind of sanction is necessary, arguing that without it, viewers who use pirated encryption devices will not understand that it is as much a crime as shoplifting.

Grenier explains that his organisation knows from experience that targeting pirates is not enough. His aim in calling for the criminalisation of the use of pirated devices is to deter viewers from buying them in the first place, because this would automatically lead to a drop in demand for the hacked services. It would also make it easier for police to track down the suppliers via the users.

“People who design and sell commercial equipment certainly have to be punished, but users are the most important category which has to be punished,” he argues.

His organisation envisages a future for the fight against pay-TV pirates where operations designed to lure illegal users into revealing themselves could become more widespread, like the one in Ireland where a pay-TV service broadcast an advert offering free T-shirts for viewers and the chance to win a trip to the Caribbean.

Unsuspecting people who were illegally viewing the transmissions happily gave their names and addresses to the company hoping to win the holiday. Instead, the firm compared their names to its list of subscribers and sent the police round to arrest those not on the list.

Grenier also argues that criminalising use ultimately protects consumers, as the pirates do not offer an after-sales service. The pirated equipment they sell soon becomes useless as the codes are changed and viewers are forced to buy a software upgrade to allow them to continue using the service.

It is impossible to calculate the number of pirates operating at any one time. They use the Internet to market their products with great success, and although they do big business, their operation is more akin to cottage industry than to professional companies. Levels of piracy vary across the Union. AEPOC points to the small amount of counterfeiting in France, where the use and possession of hacked decoding devices is illegal, as proof that the criminalisation of end-use works. Elsewhere, for example in Germany, piracy is more widespread.

Grenier says that action is clearly needed at EU level as piracy is usually a cross-border crime. Recently, counterfeiters began operating out of Turkey, marketing their bogus products in Holland and the UK, and shipping them across Bulgaria into the EU.

Grenier believes that now is the time to act. Pirates already cost terrestrial, cable and satellite broadcasters, and programme and film-makers more than 200 million ecu a year, and the figure is bound to increase with the growth of digital services.

“If we do not stop piracy at the beginning and make people understand it is forbidden, it will become an industry for pirates. It is important to act quickly. If we lose now, later it will be too late,” he warns.