Arabic internet TV firm fined $24 million for sports rights piracy

[Len]

A Swedish court has ordered a bankrupt Arabic internet TV company to pay 210 million Swedish crowns ($24 million) in damages for distributing content including English Premier League soccer without permission.

The Stockholm district court ordered the Sweden-based Advanced TV Network (ATN), which distributes Arabic-language content over the internet, to pay 194.8 million crowns in damages to Qatar’s beIN Sports and 14.6 million crowns to Albanian TV group DigitAlb.

“It is, according to the court’s opinion, shown beyond reasonable doubt that ATN at no time ... had the rights to broadcast the beIN channels in question,” the court said in a verdict dated June 29.

The Stockholm court also sentenced ATN owner Hamid al-Hamid, 58, to two and a half years in prison, while his son Ahmed and another business associate were sentenced to one year each. All three were found guilty of charges including misuse of decoding information and copyright violations.

Hamid al-Hamid’s lawyer Johan Nilsson told Reuters that he was working with Ahmed al-Hamid’s lawyer and that they planned to appeal the verdict in its entirety.

ATN declared bankruptcy in September 2016, according to the court document. It argued in court that it had distributed the content with the necessary agreements from the content owners, according to the document.

One of the prosecutors in the case, Anneli Tirud Wallin, told Reuters it was her understanding that damages could be extracted from assets belonging ATN or its owners.

Lawyer Jan Gruvstad, who is handling ATN’s bankruptcy, said he could not immediately comment on what ATN was worth or on how soon the bankruptcy procedure would be completed.

Nordic Content Protection, an anti-piracy industry group for Nordic broadcasters which originally filed the case against ATN in 2016, welcomed what it said was a landmark ruling.

“The prison sentences and record fines handed down in this case send a clear message to broadcast pirates,” the group’s chief executive Anders Braf said in a statement.

World soccer governing body FIFA, European soccer body UEFA and Formula One are investigating separate alleged illegal broadcasts of content belonging to beIN, a major global sports broadcaster operating in 33 Countries.

Nordic Content Protection, the anti-piracy group for Nordic broadcasters, originally filed the complaint against Malmo-based ATN in 2016 to Sweden’s Intellectual Property Crime at National Operations Department and the International Prosecution Office.

An official statement seen by SportCal said the pirate network is accused on providing its customers with access to illegal streams of over 2,000 channels, with a focus on channels emanating from the Middle East and Turkey.

The official release, which was jointly issued by Nordic Content Protection, BeIN and Digitalb, read: ‘The defendants were also ordered to pay a total of €18.8 million ($21.9 million) in damages (plus interest and legal costs) to BeIN Media Group and €1.4 million (US$1.5 million) in damages (plus interest and legal costs) to Digitalb Sh.A, the two legitimate broadcasters who were victims of the piracy.

‘ATN is based in Malmo, Sweden but also has operations in the United States, Greece, Denmark and Canada. Its activities consist of appropriating the reception and then decoding, packaging and re-transmitting television broadcasts to its own paying clientele.

‘The ruling announced today has dealt a significant blow to ATN’s ability to operate moving forwards; and sends a resounding message to pirate broadcast operations around the world that enforcement authorities are applying the full force of the law to extinguish the illegal operations.’

BeIN is also in the middle of a row with BeoutQ, a pirate TV service which has been illegally streaming multi-billion-dollar soccer content in the Middle East and North Africa including the ongoing Fifa World Cup. Nordic Content Protection confirmed that ATN has been distributing BeoutQ’s streams of the international soccer tournament.

La Liga, the governing body for Spanish soccer’s top flight, which claims to lose €400 million each year through global piracy, has offered its support to BeIN, saying it ‘continues to take steps with various other international rights holders to denounce the operation’.

Cameron Andrews, senior legal counsel, anti piracy, at BeIN, hailed the Swedish court’s ruling as “really significant in the fight against illegal TV pirates.”

“TV pirates like ATN package hundreds, often thousands of pirated television channels from around the world, and then make big money by selling subscriptions,” he added.

“These businesses are parasites, making huge profits off the back of stolen content. The damages and prison sentences ordered by the Swedish court reflect the serious harm that piracy on this scale causes.

“Enforcement actions like this ruling against ATN are an important part of the legitimate industry’s efforts to tackle this piracy, and sends a strong message that piracy on this scale will not be tolerated.”