Lenka Hrivnáková, Author at The Association of Commercial Television

WHAT ARE THE LEGAL CONSIDERATIONS OF AI IN THE TRADEMARK LICENSING INDUSTRY?

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) has several benefits for the trademark licensing industry: creating images of new licensed products, developing creative assets, and conducting market research. However, there are also a number of legal issues that brands must be aware of.

Here’s everything you need to know.

What is generative AI?

Generative AI refers to a type of artificial intelligence that can create new content or data. It uses machine learning algorithms to scan, review and learn from large volumes of data and then generate new content based on that learning. The generated content can include text, images, music and video.

Some of the current applications of generative AI include chatbots, language translation software and recommendation engines. However, generative AI has the potential to create entirely new forms of content that would be impossible for humans to produce on their own.

Recently, there has been a great deal of interest in, and use of, new generative AI systems such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT-4 and DALL-E 2. Microsoft has invested billions in OpenAI and is using ChatGPT to enhance its Bing search engine and Edge web browser. Google has launched its own AI chatbot, Bard. And AWS (Amazon Web Services) has partnered with Hugging Face to make Hugging Face’s products, which include an AI language generation tool named Bloom, available to AWS’s cloud customers who want to use the tools as the building blocks of their own applications. As the technology continues to advance, we will see greater adoption and more applications of generative AI.

Use of AI in the trademark licensing industry

Trademark licensing is an important commercial tool for trademark owners, enabling them to derive significant rewards by allowing third parties to use their marks. There are several ways generative AI can be a potentially game-changing technology for the trademark licensing industry.

One of the key ways generative AI can be used is in the development of images of proposed new licensed products based on generative AI system inputs of brand owner logos and trademarks, style rules and guidelines, and the desired categories and products.

Other possible uses include the development of creative assets such as style guides and sales materials, as well as market research, licensing plan development outlining potential categories for extension, retail channels and territories, and identification of potential licensee partners.

Legal issues with generative AI

There are several legal issues that can arise with the use of generative AI. One of the main concerns is that it can create content that may infringe on someone else’s intellectual property rights. For example, if an AI system generates an image of a proposed new licensed product that looks substantially similar to a competitor’s existing product, there could be questions about whether or not it constitutes copyright and/or trade dress infringement.

Similarly, if an AI system generates a design for a licensed product that is similar to an existing patented product, there could be patent infringement issues. In the event of infringement claims, who is liable? Is the owner of the AI system that scraped the Internet for huge volumes of data responsible, or is the user who queried and prompted the system and used the output liable? Although case law in this area is scarce, owners of AI systems are imposing terms of use that seek to shield the owners against liability and shift responsibility to the users. The success of this strategy is not certain as, again, case law in this area is scarce.

Another legal issue with generative AI is whether the output is protectable by copyright. Most copyright laws worldwide are based on an assumption that works of authorship are the creative output of human beings. With generative AI, the law has fallen behind reality. One argument in favor of protectability is that corporations are routinely recognized as the author of a work. Unfortunately, in connection with purely AI generated works, that argument has not yet been embraced, by either the US Copyright Office (USCO) or the courts.

On February 21, 2023, the USCO decided to register a work that was generated by both a human (i.e., the text) and AI (i.e., the images), specifically including the human-generated text and the selection, coordination, and arrangement of that text with the AI-generated images. The USCO conditioned its decision on the copyright applicant’s explicit exclusion of the non-human authorship contained in the work. In reaching its decision, the USCO reasoned that “[b]ecause of the significant distance between what a user may direct the AI system to create and the visual material the system actually produces,” the applicant did not have enough control over the final images generated to legally be considered the “inventive or master mind” behind them.

On March 16, 2023, the USCO issued further guidance stating that AI-generated works can indeed “contain sufficient human authorship to support a copyright claim. For example, a human may select or arrange AI-generated material in a sufficiently creative way that ‘the resulting work as a whole constitutes an original work of authorship’… What matters is the extent to which the human had creative control over the work’s expression and ‘actually formed’ the traditional elements of authorship.” However, human generated AI system prompts do not meet the human authorship requirement and are, therefore, not registrable. According to the USCO, prompts “function more like instructions to a commissioned artist—they identify what the prompter wishes to have depicted, but the machine determines how those instructions are implemented in its output.” The USCO’s guidance advises that copyright registration applicants have a duty to disclose the inclusion of AI-generated content in a work submitted for registration and provide a brief explanation of the human author’s contributions to the work.

Regulatory guidance and enforcement

The US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has issued guidance on the use of AI and algorithms in business practices. The FTC recommended that companies should take steps to ensure that their AI systems are accurate, transparent, explainable and fair, and that they should be mindful of the potential for these systems to perpetuate fraud or amplify biases.

On March 3, 2023, FTC spokesperson, Juliana Gruenwald, told Business Insider,“The FTC has already seen a staggering rise in fraud on social media…AI tools that generate authentic-seeming videos, photos, audio, and text could supercharge this trend, allowing fraudsters greater reach and speed.”

In June 2022, the FTC recommended that Congress pass laws to prohibit the use of AI tools to commit fraud and cause consumer harm. The FTC has also brought enforcement actions against companies for deceptive or unfair practices and privacy violations related to AI.

In March 2022, the FTC reached a settlement with a company for AI privacy violations by requiring the company to destroy algorithms and models based on wrongful data collection and processing. It is important to note that the field of AI and machine learning is rapidly evolving, and the regulatory landscape is likely to change, as well. Therefore, it is important for users of generative AI to stay informed of the latest developments and best practices in this area.

Minimizing legal liability

When using generative AI, there are several steps companies can take to minimize liability:

Be transparent:Clearly communicate that AI generated content was, in fact, generated by an AI system. If appropriate, provide information about the prompts used to elicit the AI generated output.
Review output:Monitor the output of the AI system to identify and address any issues or errors. Have a process in place for company personnel to review, search for and remove infringing, inappropriate or harmful content generated by the AI system.
Engage counsel:Consult with legal counsel to ensure compliance with relevant laws and regulations, and to develop appropriate policies and procedures for using generative AI.
Implement safeguards: Implement safeguards to avoid violations of applicable laws and regulations and maximize compliance with companies’ established policies and procedures.

Generative AI can be a valuable tool for the trademark licensing industry. However, its use can create legal and regulatory issues. Given the legal implications and risks, it’s important to think about a framework for employee use. To minimize the risk of claims and damages, companies should consider developing appropriate policies and procedures that mitigate potential risks and address legal and ethical concerns arising from the use of generative AI.

Source: thedrum.com

NOVA AND PRIMA HAD THE HIGHEST SHARES OF GRP IN THE FIRST QUARTER

Hosehold share of the TV advertising market by GRP received were unchanged in the first quarter of 2023.

Domestic TV stations delivered only a very slightly lower number of GRPs in the advertising TV market in Q1 2023 than in the same period a year earlier (-1.5%). Media Club and Nova Group remain the strongest commercial networks in terms of GRPs delivered, while Atmedia and other TV stations, among them mainly Televize Seznam, posted the highest year-on-year increases in the period under review. Data from the ATO-Nielsen Admopshere monitoring shows this.

Nova and the main channel Prima delivered the most GRPs in the first quarter. They are followed by Prima Krimi, Prima Max, Nova Cinema, Prima Cool and other stations.

According to non-public information, TV advertising performed well in the first quarter of 2023, maintaining a growth in the higher single-digit percentages year-on-year in GRPs.

Representation Media Club (stations of the Prima Group, Barrandov, Óčko and some other thematic channels) recorded the highest share in all-day viewership in the audience categories 15+ and 15-69 in the first quarter of 2023. In the 15-54 audience group, the Nova group showed the highest share.

Source: mediaguru.cz

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE COMPOSES, DRAWS AND COPIES. AND LAWSUITS ARE COMING

Consider two music industry approaches to artificial intelligence (AI). One is taken by Giles Martin, son of Sir George Martin, producer of the Beatles. Last year, he used AI to remix the Beetles’ famous 1966 album Revolver. It learned from the original mono recording what all the band members’ instruments sounded like (John Lennon’s guitar, for example), and Martin was then able to separate them and reverse-engineer them into stereo.

The result was stunning. The second approach isn’t bad either. It features the response of the moody Australian singer-songwriter Nick Cave to lyrics written in his style by ChatGPT, an AI-powered tool developed by the startup OpenAI. “These songs suck,” he said. “Songwriting is not imitation, replication or pastiche, it’s the complete opposite. It’s an act of suicide that destroys everything man has tried to create in the past.”

Remember the Napster

Cave is probably not impressed by the latest version of the algorithm hiding behind ChatGPT, called GPT-4, which OpenAI recently introduced. Martin may find it useful. Michael Nash, executive vice president and manager of digital products and services at Universal Music Group, one of the world’s largest music publishers, illustrates with these two examples the excitement and fear that is generated by the artificial intelligence that powers content-generating applications like ChatGPT (text) and Stable Diffusion (image).

AI can help in the creative process. But it can also destroy it or completely hijack it. When it comes to recorded music in general, the rise of bots is reminiscent of another historical event that shook the world: the meteoric rise and fall of Napster, the turn-of-the-millennium platform for sharing mostly pirated song recordings.

Copyright law ultimately took care of Napster’s demise. For aggressive bot providers who are accused of going over the dead bodies of intellectual property, Nash has a simple message that sounds like a threat from a music industry veteran who remembers the Napster era: “Don’t go to the market to beg for forgiveness later. That’s what Napster did.”

The main problem here isn’t AI-created Cave-themed songs or fake Shakespearean sonnets. It’s the oceans of copyrighted data that the bots sucked up in between learning to create anthropomorphic content. This information comes from everywhere: social media feeds, internet search engines, digital libraries, television, radio, statistics, and so on.

AI models are guilty of robbing databases, often without permission. Those responsible for the source material complain that their work is siphoned off without their permission, credit or compensation. AI platforms are simply doing to other media what Napster used to do to songs: completely ignoring copyright. Lawsuits are starting to swarm.

Define fair use

It’s a legal minefield with implications that reach beyond the creative industries into any business where machine learning plays a role, from self-driving cars to medical diagnostics and factory robotics to insurance and risk management. True to its bureaucratic nature, the European Union has issued a copyright directive that also talks about data mining (it was written before the current bot boom).

Experts say America lacks precedents specific to generative AI. Instead, it has conflicting theories about whether data mining without permission is permissible under the “fair use” doctrine. Napster tried to defend “fair use” in America, but failed. That doesn’t mean the result will be the same this time.

The main “fair use” arguments are fascinating. Let’s quote a lesson on the subject published in the Texas Law Review by Mark Lemley and Bryan Casey: a use of a copyrighted work is considered fair use when it serves a valuable social purpose, the source material is transformed from the original, and the act does not in any way affect the core business of the copyright owner.

Critics argue that AI does not transform the mined databases, it merely uses them. They argue that the companies behind machine learning abuse fair use to cash in on individuals’ creations for free. And they argue that it is not just the livelihood of individual creators that is at risk, but the whole of society if AI starts to promote, for example, mass surveillance and spread misinformation. Lemley and Casey weigh these arguments against the fact that the more access to training data AI has, the better it is, and that without such access, no AI would ever have come into existence.

In other words, that the industry could go into decline before it properly comes into existence. They see the situation as one of the most important legal questions of the century: “Will copyright law allow robots to learn?”

The Getty pioneers

One of the first lawsuits, which attracted widespread publicity, was filed by Getty Images. The photo agency accuses Stability AI, which owns Stable Diffusion, of infringing the copyright of millions of photos from its collection in order to create an image-generating AI model that will compete with Getty Images. Since the case is not being settled out of court, it could set a precedent for fair use.

Even more important could be the verdict soon to be delivered by the US Supreme Court in the case of copyrighted modifications of the late artist Andy Warhol’s paintings of pop idol Prince. Daniel Gervais, a copyright expert at Vanderbilt Law School in Nashville, believes the justices could provide long-awaited general guidance on fair use.

The accumulation of copyrighted data isn’t the only legal problem that generative AI has to deal with. In many jurisdictions, copyright only applies to human-generated works. Thus, we enter another grey area when we consider the extent to which bots (and their owners) can claim copyright protection for their works.

Outside of the courtroom, the main questions will be political – in particular, whether generative AI should be subject to the same protection against liability for damage caused by published content as social networks, and to what extent generative AI violates data protection.

The fight over copyright will be a big one. According to Nash, the art industry should quickly take a stand to ensure that artists’ work is licensed and used ethically when teaching AI models. He urges AI owners to “document and publish” their sources. It recognises that this is a delicate balance. Creative people do not want to appear as enemies of progress.

Many of them may start using AI for work. The lesson to take away from the Napsterian “reality cure”, as Nash calls it, is that it is better to engage with new technologies than hope they will just disappear.

Maybe this time it won’t take fifteen years of watching revenues collapse to understand it.

Source: tydenikhrot.cz

AKTV CELEBRATES SIX YEARS, JAN VLČEK IS SUCCEEDED BY KLARA BRACHTLOVÁ ON THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS AND AS PRESIDENT

The trade association bringing together the most prominent commercial broadcasters is celebrating six years of existence. Following the organizational changes of one of its members, TV Nova, Jan Vlček was replaced by Klára Brachtlová, Chief External Affairs of the media group CME, in the board of directors and as president. The change is effective as of 30 March 2023.

The Association of Commercial Television celebrated its sixth anniversary in March. In the past year, it continued to develop its activities aimed at promoting television as an advertising medium and protecting copyrighted content in the online environment. It enters the next year under the leadership of its new president, Klára Brachtlová, who represents Nova TV on the AKTV board.

“My mission in AKTV will be a smooth continuation of my colleague Jan Vlček, who was at the birth of the association and co-set its activities and direction. Over the course of its existence, the association has built a reputation as a professional partner on the side of both television advertisers and media agencies, as well as the state administration and other stakeholders with whom it is in daily contact,”

says Klára Brachtlová, President of AKTV.

Last year, under the banner of its ScreenVoice brand, it implemented the ScreenVoice TALKS conference, focused on the topic of attention in advertising. The main point of the programme was an exclusive presentation of the Czech edition of the foreign study Track the Success, which AKTV had conducted as its first own research. Its topic was a comparison of the effectiveness of advertising spots in the environment of television, BVOD and online platforms YouTube and Facebook.

For its anniversary, AKTV has prepared a special series of articles on the ScreenVoice website about prominent advertising creators who have influenced the shape of not only TV advertising, but often the entire marketing communication.

“Television is still undoubtedly the most powerful advertising medium. We will therefore build on our successful dialogue with advertisers and media agencies and continue to bring them the most interesting developments in the world of advertising, not just television advertising.”

adds Klára Brachtlová.

The second focus of AKTV’s activities is its legislative and legal work. Last year, AKTV was closely involved in the legislative process of amending the Copyright Act and related regulations. One of the main activities of the ACPV is the protection of the copyright of its members and the fight against Internet piracy. In this area, last summer, for example, it managed to conclude an agreement with the Hellspy/Hellshare repository on filtering copyrighted content of commercial broadcasters.

Visitors to the AKTV.cz website can now find a practical subpage dedicated to copyright, where they can find useful information, a glossary of terms and an explanation of how to consume copyrighted content legally on the Internet.

“We will intensify our activities to effectively protect our copyrighted content this year. But in addition, we also want to focus intensively on the transformation of the Cinematography Fund into the Audiovisual Fund, a topic that closely affects broadcasters,”

Brachtlová concludes.

About the Association of Commercial Television (www.AKTV.cz)

The Association of Commercial Television represents the most important commercial broadcasters in the Czech Republic. Its aim is to defend, support and promote their common interests.
AKTV actively participates in the preparation of national and European legislation related to commercial television broadcasting, personal data protection, journalistic work or commercial communications. It is a partner for public authorities, EU institutions and other stakeholders. One of ACPV’s main activities is to protect the copyright of its members and to fight against internet piracy.
In addition, AKTV is also active in promoting television as an advertising medium. To communicate with advertisers and media agencies, it runs the information website ScreenVoice.cz and regularly organises industry conferences.

About ScreenVoice (www.ScreenVoice.cz)

On ScreenVoice.cz readers can find inspiration, trends, research and news about what is happening in the television world in the Czech Republic and abroad. Each month is dedicated to one topic, for which original content is prepared. Thus, readers can expect a magazine reading about the first ever TV advertisement, a Christmas or Valentine’s Day special, or a reflection on advertising during the covid or the war in Ukraine. The theme of the month is complemented by a calendar of industry events, a glossary of terms from the world of total video, or the popular Myths and Facts about TV section, which provides a range of data to debunk the most common myths about TV. A separate category is the archive of AKTV events, where those interested can find all the recordings of performances and speaker presentations from the last six years.

THE CRISIS DOESN’T HURT US. PEOPLE WATCH VOYO MORE OFTEN THAN NETFLIX, SAYS THE CEO OF NOVA

In a crisis, people typically cut back on non-essentials like entertainment. But Nova TV, which resurrected the fading streaming video platform Voyo last year, is not complaining about declining interest. Voyo has already half a million users, and despite the crisis, their numbers continue to grow.

“Now in the spring season, Voyo consumption is approaching fourteen hours per week on one account, which is two hours per day. It shows that when people cut back on leisure activities, they have more time to fill,” says Daniel Grunt, who has been running the country’s largest commercial broadcaster since the beginning of this year.

What you can read in the interview:

Why isn’t Nova worried about the loss of money from TV advertising?
How did the Ordinace v růžové zahradě 2 series contribute to Voyo’s reboot?
Why is Nova betting on its own series for a more demanding audience?
Why are Czech TV shows also available on Voyo?
How does Daniel Grunt rate Rey Koranteng’s performance in the presidential election debates?

What does your appointment to the head of Nova mean? You’ve led various digital projects for a long time. So is this a signal that digital is now playing a major role at Nova and that your streaming platform Voyo will be the main one to develop?

I wouldn’t say that Nova wants to fundamentally shift its priorities towards digital. It has to do with the way the growth of streaming services has accelerated over the last three years, kick-started by covid. People spend a not inconsiderable amount of time watching them.

But we can’t just push digital. Traditional TV still feeds us and brings us a large part of our income. That should be true for the next five or seven years. But the growth of digital services cannot be ignored. We have caught momentum in this sector and it is good to build on it.

In the world of paper media, advertising revenues are falling. Is it the same for TV? Then a move towards streaming would make sense.

We don’t feel that TV advertising is declining. Nova’s advertising revenue has been growing steadily over the last few years. Last year, the Czech streaming market was about CZK 3.5 billion in size. In five years it could be double that. This is a fairly significant source of new money that we want to tap into.

Last year, Prima took it upon itself to ban the fast-forwarding of ads on smart TV sets so that it would not lose advertising revenue. It already had a Don’t Fast-forward campaign before that, urging people not to deprive it of advertising money. You didn’t. Why didn’t you?

Prima was in a slightly different situation because it’s 100% sold out.

What does that mean?

The amount of advertising space it can sell is completely sold out. At the same time, they’re seeing more and more people fast-forwarding the ad breaks. In that context, I understand what Prima did. But it doesn’t bother us because we keep our ad space sell-out rate around 75 percent. It’s a deliberate strategy to balance the viewer experience with advertising revenue. The longer and more packed your ad breaks are, the more annoyed people get and don’t last as long.

In short, you have shorter commercial breaks so people don’t fast-forward as much.

Exactly.

Back to Voyo. Why was it important for Nova to kick-start this platform two years ago, which had been languishing for ten years? You could have said there’s no point in catching up with Netflix or HBO because they’ll always have bigger budgets anyway, and bet on an older audience that’s loyal to classic terrestrial broadcasting.

Over the last two years, it’s proven to make sense. We recently reported that Voyo has over half a million users in the Czech Republic and Slovakia. We are number two behind Netflix in the Czech market and we continue to grow. No one would have expected that two years ago.

We can’t go head-to-head against multinational players. We can’t spend hundreds of millions of dollars on one series of a show. Our way is to focus on local content. That means we understand the local audience, local traditions and we can tell stories in a way that makes sense to the Czechs. At the same time, we try to make our content in a form that is premium. See what our series like Případ Roubal, Král Šumavy and Iveta look like. These are big, almost cinematic titles that we deploy specifically for Voyo.

Voyo grows faster in crisis than last year

What about the economic crisis? Aren’t you worried that people will start saving money on subscriptions to similar services, which are constantly increasing?

I’m not worried about that regarding Voyo at all. We are trying to operate as a complement to the multinational players. I think foreign platforms like Netflix, HBO, Disney or SkyShowtime may have a problem. People are used to jumping between them depending on what attractive content they are offering at the time. Whereas we are the strongest Czech service, which people probably wouldn’t change.

When I look at how long subscribers stay with us, the churn rate is on par with the global Netflix. That’s a great result because Netflix has one of the lowest cancellation rates in the industry.

Clearly, when there is a crisis, people cut back on excessive spending. They go to the cinema, concerts or sports matches less. But our subscription for a month is 159 crowns. For that amount, the whole family gets a huge amount of entertainment. Now in the spring season, Voyo consumption is approaching fourteen hours a week on one account, which is two hours a day. It shows that when people cut back on leisure activities, they have more time they want to fill somehow. Think back to the covid period. There was uncertainty then too, but streaming services accelerated in the Czech Republic. Of course, we also have a scenario that foresees shrinking demand. Then we can delay the launch of the planned content a bit and wait for better times. But I don’t think that will be necessary.

We’re looking not only at how long people spend on Voyo, but also how often they come back. The more often a platform is used, the less risk of churn.

More for Deník N subscribers.

Source: deníkn.cz

ČT MAINTAINED ITS SHARE ABOVE 30% IN MARCH, NOVA STRENGTHENED

Czech Television continued to record a share above 30 percent in March this year. The deployment of the series Odznak Vysočina or the show Superlov helped to boost Nova’s prime time channel.

The Czech Television stations remained the most watched domestic television group in the over-15 audience group in full-time broadcasting in March with a share of 30.22%. Prima group defended its position as the second strongest in this target group, while Nova group recorded the highest year-on-year growth among the strongest groups. This is according to the official ATO-Nielsen Admosphere audience measurement data.

The year-on-year increase for the Nova group was also reflected in the fact that it became the newly most watched TV group in prime time in the 15+ group. In addition, it remains number one in the 15-54 and 15-69 audience categories in both day and evening viewership.

The growth of the Nova group is driven by year-on-year share improvements, particularly for Nova Cinema, Nova Fun and Nova Gold in both day and evening, as well as an improvement in the prime-time position of the main Nova channel.

Among Czech Television’s stations, the best performers year-on-year were CT2 and the sports channel CT Sport, which saw their share increase by 0.7 pp and 0.8 pp, respectively. The main channel CT1 also improved its position slightly. On the other hand, the year-on-year decline reflects the termination of the broadcasting of CT3 and the lower share of the news channel CT24, which was higher than usual in the same period last year due to the Russian aggression in Ukraine.

The growth of the Nova Group is mainly due to the year-on-year improvement in the shares of the Nova Cinema, Nova Fun and Nova Gold stations in both daytime and evening broadcasts, as well as the improved position of the main Nova channel in prime time.

CNN Prima News, the news channel, also had a slightly lower share this March than in the same month last year (this applies to all-day broadcasting, while in prime time it recorded a slight improvement). Among the Prima Group’s channels, Prima Krimi continues to grow, already reaching a share of 4% (all-day, 15+). The Prima Max, Prima Zoom and Prima Star stations are also increasing their share, while the main Prima channel remained behind its result from last March.

Among the other stations, Atmedia and Television Seznam also increased their share year-on-year (to 1.5%, all day, 15+).

Source: mediaguru.cz

THE POPULAR HELLSPY SERVER HAS FINALLY COME TO AN END

The Hellspy Internet platform, which was one of the most popular czech data sharing servers, ceased its operation over the past weekend. It happened on the first day of April, just as planned. I&Q Group, as the operator of the service, will now refund people with subscriptions gradually.

Hellspy, as one of the largest data sharing servers in the Czech Republic, has been a thorn in the side of copyright protectors for quite some time. On this portal, as well as on a number of other Internet storage sites, people have been sharing movies, music, games and illegal copies of various programs.

For example, Weemazz, a company that searches for and removes films and music from online repositories, said last year that requests are sent to operators every day to remove copies of thousands of copyrighted works.

While Hellspy promptly deleted the reported copies, illegal content was still abundant on the site. An agreement last September, when the I&Q Group – the operator of the Hellshare and Hellspy online repositories – agreed with representatives of commercial TV stations to deploy filters that would automatically search for and delete illegal content, did not help much.

Amendment to the Czech Copyright Act

But the New Year was a turning point, when the aforementioned amendment to the Czech Copyright Act following the European regulation came into force. According to the amendment, the operator essentially assumes responsibility for its users – it is responsible for what data users upload to the server.

Hellspy reacted to this by scrapping searches after the new year. No matter what terms you typed into the search box on its site, all you got was a message that the file you wanted could not be found.

Considering that this year the service was only available for downloads as part of a subscription fee or for credits that users earned by uploading data, the company lost a substantial amount of funding with the new year. That’s apparently why the company has decided to cut back on operations from the coming month. In practice, this means that the service is no longer available from 1 April 2023. The website only displays information about the termination of the service and a contact form.

Even before the closure of Hellspy.cz, the operators of the service began to harass users with subscriptions about the fact that they would be refunded if they had subscribed to the service for a longer period. So it is a pro-rated amount that will be calculated on the remaining days after the first of April. So for most users, it will be tens of crowns, hundreds of crowns at most.

Source: novinky.cz

TV COMPANIES START TO DEFEAT ULOŽ.TO THANKS TO AN AMENDMENT TO THE COPYRIGHT ACT THAT GIVES MORE PROTECTION TO AUTHORS OF WORKS

The Ulož.to platform, which allows uploading and downloading of films, documents and photos, may have to change its services significantly and keep a closer eye on what people upload to its repository. This was shown by the latest dispute with Ulož.to initiated by Prima TV. The Municipal Court in Prague ruled at the end of February that the platform, which is operated by petacloud, must not allow people to download the Zoo series produced for Prima by Good TV Production SE from its repository.

At the same time, Judge Filip Liška ordered petacloud to provide Prima with information about those who illegally uploaded episodes of the Zoo series to its repository, including their IP addresses and other data. “It has been proven that (Ulož.to) is committing unfair competition and infringing the plaintiff’s copyright to the series in question,” Liška said.

Ulož.to finds the court’s decision surprising and is going to appeal against it. “It is based on legislation that does not apply to Ulož.to,” believes Jan Karabina, the statutory executive of petacloud. According to him, the development of case law cannot be assessed based on non-final judgements. However, two years ago, the courts gave final judgements to ban Ulož.to from offering six films, including Pelíšky or Ostře sledované vlaky, for which Dilia holds the copyright.

Ulož.to’s business is based on providing space to store virtually anything. And anyone can download from it, either free of charge at slow speeds or fast for a fee. Experts estimate that petacloud collects hundreds of millions of crowns in fees for faster downloads. However, it is impossible to find out the exact figures because contrary to law, the company does not publish its financial statements and does not report on its performance.

Judge Liška justified the verdict on the basis of an amendment to the Copyright Act, which came into force at the beginning of this year. It provides much more protection for copyright in case of sharing over the internet and limits its abuse.

“It is a revolutionary change. The amendment says that as of January, Ulož.to cannot use the excuse that it is only an intermediary as it is a user,” explains lawyer Rudolf Leška. According to him, if a company wants to offer works for further download, it must ensure the protection of copyright.

“The amendment opens the door for authors and producers of works to bring an action against such swindlers more easily,” said another expert, František Vyskočil, representing Dilia, the collective copyright management agency. According to both, more and more copyright owners can now be expected to defend themselves against such sharing of their works. “I will be much more optimistic when clients ask me whether they should file an action,” confirms Leška.

Prima has already succeeded once, specifically in the case of the Duch series. But then it won by default because Ulož.to failed to appear in court. The court gave a default judgement and did not address the merits at all. “However, on appeal, the High Court upheld the enforceability of the judgement,” says Prima’s counsel Ludmila Kutějová. According to her, the Duch series should no longer be available for download on the Ulož.to website.

Prima filed the same action on the grounds of the illegal offering of the Slunečná series. The court has not yet heard the case. After the current success, Prima plans to continue and bring actions concerning other films and series. And in the next wave, it will also require both Ulož.to and the people who uploaded its works to the platform and thus enabled their illegal distribution to hand over the unjust enrichment. It therefore requires the platform to disclose the number of downloads or the IP addresses from where the episodes of their series were uploaded.

CinemArt has also taken the route of recovering unjust enrichment. According to its representative, Rudolf Leška, CinemArt is demanding approximately CZK 1 million for the film Šarlatán. This amount was calculated as lost profits as a result of the film, which was awarded several Czech Lions, being offered by Ulož.to for free download. “We will proceed like CinemArt and claim unjust enrichment,” Kutějová confirmed.

Prima is not alone. TV Nova has also brought actions over its series Ulice or Ordinace v růžové zahradě. The court granted its motion in January this year and issued a preliminary ruling ordering the platform to prevent any downloading of the series. However, petacloud ignored the ruling according to Nova, which is why Nova turned to the enforcement agent. “Our enforcement motion was granted and the operator of Ulož.to was fined for not respecting the preliminary ruling,” said Zdeňka Zimová, a senior lawyer at Nova. However, Karabina said that they had appealed against the enforcement decision and were confident that they would succeed, just as they had reportedly succeeded in overturning other preliminary rulings.

Ulož.to is not the only platform where you can download films, TV series or audiobooks. However, the owners of copyrighted works do not have such disputes with them. “Ulož.to is the biggest, they are the most visible,” explains Leška.

It is also true that, for example, Hellspy and Hellshare entered into an agreement with Prima, Nova and Óčko last year to deploy automated filters to prevent pirate distribution of recordings and films. A month ago, Hellspy announced that it would cease operations because of the new law.

Source: archiv.hn.cz

ULOZ.TO VERSUS CINEMART. DISTRIBUTOR WINS DISPUTE OVER ŠARLATÁN MOVIE DOWNLOADS IN COURTS

Film distributor CinemArt has won another round of litigation against Ulož.to. It concerned Šarlatán movie, which Ulož.to was offering for illegal online viewing in 2020. CinemArt subsequently blocked everything through a preliminary injunction through the court. However, Ulož.to then sued and claimed damages. The city court has now rejected its claim.

The latest judgment is not yet final. According to it, Ulož.to is to pay CinemArt’s legal costs as well.

Lawyers of Uloz.to cloud, a. s., otherwise demanded about 800 thousand crowns from CinemArt in this part of the case. They justified the amount on the grounds that the company was forced by the court to refrain from allowing any digital downloads of the Šarlatán movie because of the distributor, thus incurring large costs.

Specifically, this included, among other things, having to hire people to search for files with the word “Šarlatn” / “Charlatan” in them, review them, or block them. According to Ulož.all this was done over many months.

CinemArt has long rejected the counterparty’s demand for any compensation. It insisted that the image was and is offered illegally on the Ulož.to website and the court’s decision to block everything was correct, complying with Czech and European law. He also pointed out that the distribution of films is not a cheap affair and it is customary to pay those who own the copyright to watch them.

The battle over interpretation

After the first decision of the City Court – i.e. after December 2020 – the High Court in Prague intervened in the “Šarlatán” / “Charlatan” case, which in turn upheld the position of Ulož.to, which is generally based on the right to freedom in the online space.

On procedural grounds, the High Court overturned the City Court’s decision, stating that similar cases must be better and more precisely formulated in the future.

It was on the basis of this legal opinion that Ulož.to subsequently sued CinemArt for the aforementioned sum of eight hundred thousand.

The Šarlatán movie is otherwise still available for download. “Independently of the latest court decision, the litigation regarding this illegal offer continues. We continue to seek an end to this illegal activity,” said CinemArt spokesman Petr Slavik, adding that a final decision “will be a long time coming”.

Source: novinky.cz

PRIMA: SKIPPING COMMERCIALS WAS A BIG DRAMA, BUT THE EMOTIONS HAVE SUBSIDED

For three quarters of a year now there has been a ban on skipping ads in the back view of IPTV operators in the broadcasts of Prima group TV stations. What the measure has brought and what the next steps will be, representatives of the Prima group explain.

The MediaGuru.cz editorial team talked to Lukáš Kubát, Petr Milo and Michal Stárek from the Prima Group about the possibilities of blocking skipping ads and further plans in the field of internet television. They assess the step, which the Prima Group has taken on 1 June 2022, as a success. “We have saved over 20 thousand advertising GRPs. That’s about 150 million crowns,” they say. Prima representatives also spoke about how they plan to implement the content of the new Prima+ video library into the operators’ offers.

On the first of June it will be a year since operators had to deploy one of the solutions you suggested regarding skipping ad blocks on Prima Group channels. How do you evaluate this step from your point of view in hindsight?

Lukáš Kubát: We see it positively, because we have saved the GRPs from which we finance our production, and the GRPs are no longer getting lost somewhere. We have secured the monetization of the viewer because IPTV is growing and gaining importance. If we let that go, like timeshare viewing, the problem gets exponentially bigger. In 2021 we lost around 30k GRPs, by 2022 it would be 40k. The increase is dozens percent if we wouldn’t act. By stepping on the brake and asserting our rights, the market has somehow gotten used to it. It was a huge drama, but I think the emotions have subsided and the operators can see for themselves that as long as they implement solutions that improve the user experience (e.g. shortened ad block, fast-forwarding of content, 60-second window with the ability to fast-forward ads at the start of viewing, accurate show starts), nothing terrible happens. We understand that this has been difficult from the operators’ perspective, and we appreciate their constructive engagement with us.

You obviously commend the move as a good decision, but the operators were not so happy. They mostly agree that this is a constraint that severely limits viewer satisfaction. One of them even called the move illegal.

Lukáš Kubát: We see it as a way to re-establish the value of our content. It was kind of a preface to our VOD platform. If our content is to have any value, we can’t give it to people for free, because in the world of content, the person who created it has to live off something, and that’s either advertising or subscriptions. If I’m putting an ad out there and someone says, “Hey, don’t watch that ad. Just look at the content.” – then it stops working for me financially. That’s why I’m glad that today we can offer our viewers the Prima+ service, where the Premium tariff allows you to watch our content without ads.

The obligation to block ad skipping, or your agreement with the operators, has been in place for about three quarters of a year at this point. So is this model set up well in your opinion?

Lukáš Kubát: From the feedback from operators, we see that the most dissatisfied are those who have not implemented any improved solution that Prima allows, and have only disabled forward scrolling for both the program and ads. I would imagine that some of the larger operators will click something in their platform and say, “Sure, don’t skip the ad, skip the content.” That it would be that simple. It shows the less flexible approach of some of the big ones, and conversely the flexibility of the small operators.

Petr Míl: We have provided compensation for the ad skipping ban and some technical means to improve the user experience from a different perspective. We have offered operators precise start times for shows and the user doesn’t have to search for them. We also made it possible to skip ads after a few minutes.

Lukáš Kubát: When we talk to operators after nine months, this is the point they really appreciate. The operator says: Leaving aside everything that bothers me, the punctual start of shows really improves the viewer experience. When a viewer watches a show and has the option to skip, finding the exact beginning is a bit more annoying than having the show start exactly where it’s supposed to start.

I would go back to April last year, when the Chamber of Commerce held a meeting with representatives of some of the operators and invited journalists. One of the visibly dissatisfied operators was 4net.tv, which even then expressed its dissatisfaction with the fact that this was a one-sided solution that had not been discussed with them. This is also confirmed by T-Mobile, which complains that there is a lack of sufficient discussion between media houses and operators to address the issue. The operator has repeatedly asked for standardisation of the technical solution and approach to playing advertising blocks, but unfortunately this has not happened. Why?

Petr Míl: Because standardization could not be found, we came up with our own solution and we offer that it can easily become a standard.

When I followed the discussion and the criticisms at the time, my understanding was that the operators did not have a manual that clearly told them what to do and that, on the contrary, these conditions were set out, I don’t know if I’m using the right word, in a lax way, and that each operator had to deal with it on his own.

Lukáš Kubát: We had it described in general terms, because the brief was simple: disable ad skipping. Some operators made it a problem because we found out that they buy the platform somewhere, for example, and therefore they have to have a detailed specification for their supplier and they have to set it up. I understand that it would be easier if there was a technical bible that described the terms exactly. We told the operators how we wanted to do it, but we conducted it as a dialogue. It’s hard to please everyone when introducing a new solution. If we came in and said, here’s the documentation, we’d be looking forward in nine months when it’s done. We said to the operators clearly, the problem is with you and you are allowing customers to skip advertising in timeshifts, so please prevent it. The discussion has been going on for two or three years and historically there has been an effort to get operators to ban this.

But nothing has been actively done about it…

Lukas Kubát: We told the operators that we would give them the technical cooperation to say where the pause starts and where it ends. We will “tag” your program and you have to tell us where the standard is. We found two in the world. One is the API and the other is SCTE-35 (the markup that US regional TV used to use, ed.). You tell us what kind of tagging you would like and we will give you the technical cooperation. And the operators then make sure that when that marking occurs, it’s impossible to skip the commercial.

Popis tabulky: Improving the ranking of Prima Group stations on operators’ menus in 2023

Popis tabulky: Evaluating the solution to the ban on skipping ads in delayed viewership

So, the current situation is that this obligation somehow works for operators, and one of them even allows you to insert online advertising, which is the optimal solution for you. What is your next plan and where should it go from here? Is it optimal for you to have multiple solutions or would only one model be optimal for you? T-Mobile has written to our editorial team that from June 1 they plan to extend the ability to skip an ad block after three minutes to four.

Lukáš Kubát: We announced this plan, where we would go for the possibility of skipping ads after three minutes, which is half of the ad break, to operators at the Chamber of Commerce in September 2021. Here we also mentioned that we plan to increase from three to four minutes in the future. There is no reason why an IPTV viewer should see fewer ads than any other. We want to keep it at eight minutes for now. For operators who will have the option of embedded online advertising, the limit will not change and will remain at five minutes.

Operators also said that their statistics show a drop in the viewership of Prima Group programmes in back-to-back viewing, but did not give any specific figures as this is internal know-how. Do you have any statistics in this respect?

Lukáš Kubát: We do not have data from the operators. They mention it, but sometimes it is difficult to distinguish in their view when it is TV season and when it is the so-called off season. Operators saw a decline in the summer after the introduction of this condition, which was on June 1, but this is a decline that happens every year and should be compared year by year rather than month by month. We don’t see a significant drop in viewership from the data we get from Nielsen. We see that Prima’s viewership is growing and that we have grown from a share of 25% to 27% in the 15+ audience group. We see that IPTV is not growing as fast, it’s flattened out more. We are seeing some impact but it is not material. We are growing as a group and we are happy.

Petr Míl: There may have been a slight change in user behaviour where, if they have disabled the ability to skip ads, they can watch our show live and on a competitor’s TV they can watch the show from a recording and skip the ad. For us, viewership remains because whether the viewer bites into the show live or in delayed viewership is irrelevant to us.

The chart you presented to us shows that in the 15+ group you have managed to reduce the gap between you and the Nova group over the years. Clearly, then, you don’t see this as a fundamentally bad decision. So did everything turn out as you expected for you?

Lukáš Kubát: Exactly. 22,000 GRPs saved is approximately 150 million crowns for us, so in six months we are about half of what we set out to do. We said we were losing around 300 million, so we consider that number confirmed.

I also asked on the internet about customer satisfaction of individual operators, who understandably see it as viewer discomfort. Generally speaking, those who don’t care or can tolerate this restriction are very few. Quite often there have been comments that the viewer has stopped watching Prima altogether, or doesn’t understand why this step is being taken when there are usually more than a hundred programmes available on pay services.

Petr Míl: The basic view is that we are funded only by advertising money. In order to produce shows that users watch, we need them to watch advertising. By skipping advertising, they have made it impossible for us to fund production.

Lukáš Kubát: It’s a tough view of the viewer and I can put myself in their shoes. In their campaigns, the operators enticed viewers to skip the ads. But they didn’t have the rights to buy it. So it’s a problem on the part of the operators who historically have not informed their customers correctly. The operator said: “I’ll get a new customer from terrestrials, they can watch shows on delay, skip ads, and save a lot of time.” No one addressed how the operator would deal with Prima. The viewer doesn’t see it.

And, as we have already said, there will certainly also be a difference in the perception of these moves by customers of different operators. If viewers are with operators that have fully integrated all the options we have enabled for IPTV operators (such as sledovani.tv), they certainly don’t feel the discomfort of watching shows as strongly as viewers of operators that have not taken advantage of these options. However, we believe that the situation will improve in this respect in the future.

Popis tabulky: Daily viewership results in 15+, source: ATO – Nielsen Admosphere, live + TS0-3, as of 1. 3. 2023

The ability to rewind is undoubtedly one of the benefits of IPTV or internet TV, so you can’t blame customers for not liking it when people have this functionality taken away.

Petr Míl: It should be emphasised that we do not prohibit rewinding of programmes, we prohibit rewinding of advertising. The fact that some operators have done this by banning replays of our programmes altogether is their decision.

O2 has solved the ban on skipping commercials by banning the ability to rewind altogether. At the beginning of last year, there was already an information bar on your stations that the operator’s clients would lose your programmes within a few weeks, which in the end did not happen. So what are your current relations with one of the biggest operators on the market?

Lukáš Kubát: We are glad that we finally signed the contract. In February we did not have it yet. But the essence of the problem was that they were distributing our channels without a valid contract.

This big operator was distributing your channels without a contract? That’s hard to believe.

Lukáš Kubát:We couldn’t agree on new terms. One of them was the implementation of limiting ad skipping. The contract said that we would implement it within a year. We said to them, “You are aware that we are implementing a ban on skipping.” And that was actually one of the points of the conflict we had.

Michal Stárek: All the operators have committed to these conditions by a certain date, and only O2 said no.

So where do your relationships stand now?

Lukáš Kubát: We have a contract, the relations are normalised and good.

Okay, but as far as the positioning of your programmes in the O2 TV offer is concerned, it’s not quite optimal. After the inclusion of the channels of the Nova group in better programming positions, your stations were moved to worse preferences.

Lukáš Kubát: We cannot influence the operator to place us on particular positions that we have not agreed on. In particular, the operator O2 perceives the situation in such a way that if it cannot offer the viewer an improved quality of content or user experience, it will say that it does not want to have these programmes at the top. So, while we are in the top 30, we are not quite in the premium positions. O2 and rival group Nova have the same owner, taking out our positions without the ability to negotiate and replacing them with Nova group channels seems to us to be problematic from a competition perspective.

Petr Míl: Unlike O2, we have agreed with some operators to place our channels in better programming positions.

I will ask about that in a moment. Can you tell us what the distribution agreements with the operator generally contain? I understand you can’t comment on specific agreements with individual operators, but can you say what you are looking out for in them?

Lukáš Kubát:To put it simply, we sell our channels. We sell them either in live mode or in delayed viewing mode. IPTV has both contracts because it offers timeshift and within that there is a start over, a seven-day timeshift, and of course there are defined terms and conditions on how the content can be handled. For example, it treats how many simultaneous streams can be broadcast, how many devices can be registered, etc.

My colleague indicated a moment ago that several operators have moved your thematic clones to more attractive positions this year. How have you done that?

Lukáš Kubát: We offer a discount for premium positioning of our programmes, but we will not disclose the amount.

Let’s go back to O2 TV. You have a contract, but the relationships are probably not the best right now. Are you still going to negotiate with them?

Lukáš Kubát: We definitely want to build long-term relationships with operators that work, and we are interested in having our channels in the top positions, but it’s always a question of agreement. I believe that this will improve in the future.

In our interview, you mentioned your new video library prima+ several times. Will you try to implement its content directly into operators’ offers in the future?

Lukáš Kubát: The new service allows us to expand the range of content we can offer to the viewer. Naturally, we want to make this content available to operators. We will look for a form of cooperation and we are talking to operators about what is a good business relationship, setup, display, integration.

So you’re at the beginning…

Lukáš Kubát: Exactly. We want our content to reach the viewers and the operator is the aggregator that has the ability to offer that to the viewers. Viewers should be able to watch ZOO in preview or watch it without commercials, both options are offered by Prima+. If a seven-day archive is not enough and he wants to watch all the episodes, he has the option. We want to expand our relevance with operators and offer viewers the widest possible range of audience favourites.

Source: mediaguru.cz

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