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In the autumn, the Chamber of Commerce conducted a survey among members of the Cultural and Creative Industry Section on the topic of copyright infringement on the internet. A total of 23 respondents from among film producers and distributors, TV broadcasters, book publishers, as well as professional associations of copyright holders took part in the survey. The clear conclusion of the survey is that all respondents have experience with illegal sharing of their works online and are trying to combat it, but the current options for copyright protection on the internet are ineffective and too costly and time-consuming.
The aim of the survey was to find out how widespread illegal sharing of copyrighted works is in the online environment, whether copyright holders are spending resources to protect them and which services they consider the most harmful in this respect. The survey involved rights holders of films, TV series, books or music, most often companies in the SME segment, which exercise copyrights to units, tens, thousands and even millions of works.
Almost 90% of respondents said they monitor and report illegal sharing of their works online for deletion, most often by an authorised employee (83%) or an external company (39%). The most frequently monitored platforms are file sharing platforms (repositories), followed by YouTube and Facebook. The most frequently involved repositories are uloz.to, prehraj.to, fastshare.cz, datoid.cz, edisk.cz, sdilej.cz, webshare.cz and sledujte.to.
“In the survey, copyright holders independently agreed on a list of websites where massive infringements of their copyrights occur most frequently. While the operators of these services try to play the role of cloud storage providers who are not responsible for the content they store, it is gradually becoming clear that this alibi will not be enough for them for much longer. That is why the operators of perhaps the most famous service of this type, ulož.to, have decided to discontinue the option of public file sharing. We firmly believe that other repositories will soon follow suit and that internet piracy in this form will hopefully be eradicated soon,”
says Marie Fianová, Chairwoman of the Cultural and Creative Industry Section of the Czech Chamber of Commerce.
A second aspect of online piracy is the financial cost of protecting works. Nearly 40% of respondents said they spend more than CZK 50,000 a month on monitoring and reporting works, and 22% even more than CZK 100,000. A third of the respondents also chose to take the costly legal route, with more than half a million crowns spent in the past three years by a quarter of respondents.
“Copyright holders are spending hundreds of thousands to millions of crowns a month to protect their works on repositories, while the operators of these services still refuse to take their share of responsibility and implement measures to prevent their services from being used for pirate sharing of copyrighted works. This certainly does not seem right to us,”
adds Marie Fianová.
However, respondents consider protecting their rights at court to be costly and lengthy, and therefore ineffective in the long run. The creation of an out-of-court mechanism that could, as a last resort, make massively infringing websites inaccessible is suggested as a suitable solution.
Agcom’s plans to combat online piracy in Italy are taking shape.
The communications regulator has now commissioned its so called ‘Piracy Shield’, designed to take down sites that illegally broadcast live sporting events.
“The platform is therefore functional. It is now up to the operators providing access (ISPs) who must obscure these sites, on the advice of the rights holders, to carry out the necessary activities to make the platform operational. Those activities must be completed by 31 January 2024,” said an Agcom statement.
The Piracy Shield is basically a machine to machine system. Accredited rightsholders can “upload” the reports of violation, with evidence of how the breach has taken place. The platform then automatically directs them to the accredited ISPs who provide for the blocking of the IP address within 30 minutes.
The platform requirements defined by the Authority were discussed and shared as part of the work of the Anti-piracy Technical Committee convened by Agcom, in collaboration with the National Cybersecurity Agency, which took office last September 7.
The work of the committee, which was also attended by representatives of the Mimit, the Postal Police and the main Associations for the fight against piracy and the protection of copyright, was attended by the Special Units of Goods and Services of the Guardia di Finanza at Agcom which, within the framework of the current memorandum of understanding, will collaborate with the Authority to ensure the start-up and efficient operation of the platform through, among other things, constant assistance to users of the Piracy Shield.
Source: broadbandtvnews.com
Czech Television’s stations returned to the position of the TV group with the highest share of viewership in the audience group over 15 years of age by a narrow margin. This is according to the official ATO-Nielsen measurement data for November 2023. The aggregate share of CT stations reached 28.48% throughout the day. However, compared to the same month last year, CT’s share was 1.48 percentage points lower.
The position of the three strongest TV groups is balanced in full-day viewership of 15+. CT is followed by Prima (28.06%) and Nova (27.86%).
Year-on-year, the best performing group was Nova, which gained 0.75 percentage points and even one percentage point in the 15-54 group. At the same time, Nova remains strongest in the 15-54 and 15-69 audience groups, as well as in prime time in all critical categories.
Atmedia continued its growth in November, exceeding 6% share (6.26%) in the 15-69 group. Television Seznam also increased its share.
More on mediaguru.cz
Source: mediaguru.cz
The High Court in Olomouc has upheld the preliminary ruling issued by the Regional Court in Brno on a petition by the Association of Commercial Television (AKTV), requiring the operators of the eDisk.cz and Sledujteto.cz repositories not to allow the uploading and downloading of copyright-protected works of Nova and Prima TV Groups. The court thus upheld AKTV’s argument that the repository operator had committed an unfair competition act referred to as “stowaway” or “free riding” (also known as “impermissible parasitism”). Similar decisions have been issued against other repositories in recent months.
As part of its activities, AKTV focuses intensively on combating the illegal distribution of television series and other protected works, especially in the environment of internet repositories. AKTV’s core legal argumentation for combating internet piracy has been repeatedly found correct by the courts. The most significant achievements so far are the preliminary rulings issued against the operators of the Fastshare platform or the eDisk.cz and Sledujteto.cz repositories.
Television broadcasters have long spent large amounts of money on the production of original Czech series and other audiovisual works subsequently published on television or in the online video libraries Voyo and prima+. At the same time, however, these exclusive series, films or programmes are illegally disseminated almost immediately after their official publication via online repositories where they are available for download or online playback. These repositories, such as eDisk.cz or Sledujteto.cz, not only provide their users with the space to upload and download these works but encourage such infringement by rewarding active users who upload popular titles that are then downloaded or watched online by other users.
“The decisions of the Regional Court in Ostrava and the Regional Court in Brno, both of which were upheld by the High Court in Olomouc, represent a significant breakthrough in our previous decision-making practice and a very important signal for all copyright holders. Every year we spend hundreds of millions of crowns on the production of original Czech works for our audiences, and virtually all works are illegally shared immediately after publication. This fundamentally damages our business model and reduces our return on investment. Absurdly, repository operators profit significantly from our attractive content, for example by selling download credits or even advertising alongside our copyrighted content,”
says Klára Brachtlová, President of the Association of Commercial Television.
AKTV initiated legal action against the operators of eDisk.cz and Sledujteto.cz this year. In the spring, AKTV filed a motion for a preliminary ruling with the Regional Court in Ostrava against the operator of Fastshare and in the autumn a similar motion against the operators of eDisk.cz and Sledujteto.cz with the Regional Court in Brno. Both courts issued preliminary rulings on the grounds that the platforms’ profits are generated through the continuous unauthorised distribution of titles whose creation is financed exclusively by Nova and Prima. The operators of the repositories in question were ordered to refrain from allowing the uploading, downloading or online viewing of exclusive audiovisual works of Nova and Prima TV Groups. The preliminary ruling was then confirmed by the High Court in Olomouc as the Court of Appeal.
“We are very pleased that the court has upheld our legal view that other competitors cannot be allowed to actively enable, support and develop a business based on deriving a financial benefit from the actions of their users that is based on massive infringement of others’ copyright. The court has found that this may cause harm to both television groups, in particular in the form of audience churn, dilution and loss of exclusivity of individual series, reduced interest in their video libraries, as well as reduced advertising revenue and reduced profits from subscriptions to on-demand services,”
adds the counsel of the Association of Commercial Television, doc. JUDr. Dana Ondrejová, Ph.D., Legato legal office.
“Our long-term goal is to protect our content and prevent any loss of its value as much as possible. We are ready to negotiate with the operators of Internet repositories and jointly set conditions and technical measures to prevent illegal sharing. If, however, instead of engaging in dialogue with us, these operators prefer to transfer their service to another domain or change to a foreign company based in the Seychelles, we consider this a clear signal that they are trying to avoid their legal obligations in every possible way and are indifferent to compliance with the law,”
adds Klára Brachtlová.
In addition to taking legal action against the operators of the most infringing repositories, the Association of Commercial Television has long focused on awareness-raising activities. As part of these initiatives, it operates an information website on copyright, which is available at aktv.cz/copyright. You can find there a glossary explaining the terms used in the field of intellectual property protection, answers to frequently asked questions (FAQs), and regular news on internet piracy. There is also an up-to-date series of articles on the new study Online Copyright Infringement in the European Union, published by the European Union Intellectual Property Office (EUIPO), available on the website.
