Pirate IPTV Service Sellers Who Faced $24 Million Lawsuit Are Back in Business
Published on October 20, 2020
- DISH has sued four men from the UAE who are reselling “Advanced TV Network” services in the US.
- The broadcasting giant has identified 107 of its works in the pirate platform and demands over $16 million in damages.
- Moreover, the court is to decide on a permanent injunction request and the domains’ ownership.
DISH Networks is targeting a group that was reselling a Swedish pirate service, which was seemingly closed down. In the past, three Swedes were accused of selling pirate IPTV services and supplying them to hundreds of thousands of subscribers. The men were operating a platform named “Advanced TV Network” (ATN), which made them over $7 million in subscription sales between 2008 and 2013.
This is when the Swedish police raided the base of operations, dismantled it, and arrested three men. The Stockholm Patent and Market court sentenced the operator to 2.5 years in prison and the other two to one year, while the damage compensation that was approved was set to $24 million.
Related: A New Wave of Pirate Domain Seizures by ACE Hits the Scene
One would naturally suggest that this would be the end of ATN, but based on what DISH alleges through a new lawsuit, it isn’t. As the broadcaster mentions now, ATN has moved to the United Arab Emirates through partners, continuing its illegal operation and targeting a global audience. Of course, the name of the selling platforms has changed to “Alfa TV Inc.,” and also “ElafnetTV,” who are both presenting themselves as official distributors of ATN.
Since it is clear that they target customers in the United States, DISH has submitted their new lawsuit on a Florida district court that should have no jurisdiction issues. As expected, DISH channels are among the massive list of the offered media, so the media company is in a position to request the approval of damage compensation again.
As DISH lays out in their lawsuit, there are 107 registered works belonging to them, and which are being infringed by ATN’s resellers. They demand $150,000 for each of these, so the total amount requested is just over $16 million. Moreover, DISH wants the approval of a permanent injunction that would forbid the sellers from doing business, at least in the United States. Finally, DISH requests all the infringing domains to be passed under its ownership, which would disrupt the pirates’ operations.
Finally, DISH claims that they already sent multiple copyright complaints to Ibrahim, Mansi, Hammo, and Abuoun, the ATN resellers, but they never heard back from them. Also, DISH’s content was never removed from ATN’s offerings, so the written warnings were utterly ignored. Thus, the legal road was the only one to take now.
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