CASBAA Unveils Anti-Piracy Coalition

CASBAA, which represents the interests of the Asian pay-TV industry, has formed the Coalition Against Piracy (CAP) to tackle the region’s rampant content theft problem.

CAP, which will coordinate industry resources to fight piracy, will be led by Neil Gane as general manager. The coalition includes beIN Sports, CASBAA, The Walt Disney Company, Fox Networks Group, HBO Asia, NBCUniversal, the Premier League, Turner Asia Pacific, A+E Networks, Astro, BBC Worldwide, Media Partners Asia, the NBA, PCCW Media, Sony Pictures Television Networks, Asia, True Visions, TV5MONDE and Viacom International Media Networks.

CAP will collaborate with similar initiatives eleswhere, including with the newly-formed Alliance for Creativity and Entertainment (ACE).

John Medeiros, chief policy officer at CASBAA, noted, “One of CASBAA’s primary missions is to bring our members together to join the global fight against content theft. That’s what we are doing in establishing the CAP. CAP will focus on addressing the growing threat of illicit streaming devices (ISDs) and apps, which facilitate massive piracy of movies, sports, TV series and other creative video content. This does great harm to the content creation and distribution industries in Asia, as well as the millions of people who work in the creative economy around the world.”

“The Asia Pacific region has some of the worst rates of online piracy in the world,” said Gane. “The prevalence of ISDs across Asia is staggering. The criminals who operate the ISD networks and the pirate websites are profiting from the hard work of talented creators, seriously damaging the legitimate content ecosystem as well as exposing consumers to dangerous malware.”

Medeiros added that the current legal frameworks across the region can’t adequately tackle the problem. “Consumers are offered huge content bundles from overseas, as if they were legal. But receiving stolen content is wrong, and the fundamental purpose of an ISD network—with an innocent-looking box as its home node—is to monetize this redistribution of content without any recompense to those who worked to produce it.”