Hong Kong, September 6th, 2007 – With the up-coming launch of the Rugby World Cup competition and the opening of the English Premier League football season in August, the Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) is distributing a new round of 300 letters of awareness to Hong Kong bars, clubs and other public venues reminding them to respect pay-TV content copyright and the seriousness of engaging in satellite TV signal piracy.
The “awareness” letters further encouraged the bars to subscribe to pay-TV services through Hong Kong’s three fully-licensed pay-TV operators: Hong Kong Cable, now TV and TVB Pay Vision. Print advertisements were also placed in key newspapers and magazines to further increase public awareness.
The unauthorized commercial display in Hong Kong bars, clubs and other public venues of pay-TV programming intended for other markets, as well as trading in pirated television decoders, are acts of copyright infringement.
World Cup soccer organiser FIFA and pay-TV operators filed lawsuits against a number of Hong Kong bars for illegal broadcasting the World Cup football tournament in June of last year, resulting in six-figure settlement payments for copyright infringement along with public apologies.
CASBAA, which represents the interests of the pay-TV industry across Asia, promotes the protection of the IPR of TV content creators and distributors, including licensed sports TV programming.
“The pay-TV industry will continue to take necessary legal action against pay-TV content copyright and illegal TV signal broadcast violators,” said Mr. Simon Twiston Davies, CEO of CASBAA. “We, as an industry are committed to protecting the copyright of TV content and the interests of authorised pay-TV distributors not only in Hong Kong but across the entire region. We urge Hong Kong bars, clubs and other public venues to subscribe to licensed pay-TV programming from authorised pay-TV operators.”
###
For Chinese version of the press release please click here.
About CASBAA – www.casbaa.com
The Cable & Satellite Broadcasting Association of Asia (CASBAA) is an industry-based advocacy group dedicated to the promotion of multi-channel TV via cable, satellite, broadband and wireless video networks across the Asia-Pacific. CASBAA represents some 125 Asia-based corporations, which in turn serve more than three billion people. Members include AETN International (History Channel), Asia Broadcast Networks, Asia Broadcast Satellite, AsiaSat, Astro, Australia Network, Bloomberg Television, Chunghwa Telecom, Discovery Networks Asia, Genesis Networks, Granada International/ITV Worldwide, HBO Asia, Intelsat, Macquarie, MediaFLO Technologies, Motorola, MTV Networks Asia Pacific, Nokia, now TV, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sony Pictures Television International, STAR Group, Sun Microsystems, TrueVisions, Turner International Asia Pacific, Walt Disney Television International, Zonemedia, Al Jazeera, Amarchand Mangaldas, Asian Food Channel, BBC Global Channels Asia-Pacific, Celestial Movies, ESPN STAR Sports, GMA Network Inc., GroupM, Fu Yang Media, HiT Entertainment, Hong Kong Cable, Irdeto, KDB Skylife, Lovells, Measat, MGM Networks, Minter Ellison, National Geographic, Paul Weiss, Playboy TV, ProtoStar, PT Direct Vision, SAT-GE, Tandberg Television, Tata Sky, Ten Sports, TimeWarner, TV18, Viaccess and Zee TV.
For enquiries, please contact:
CASBAA
Helen Shek / Katie Wong
CASBAA Communications
Tel: +852 2854 9913
Fax: +852 2854 9530
Email: pr@casbaa.com