Piracy alarms cable TV industry

Cable television piracy in the Philippines is growing at an alarming rate, with revenue losses now estimated at more than P100 million a year.

Industry leaders have voiced their concern over what they called "the growing problem" of illegal cable TV broadcasts in the country.

Rene Esguerra, vice president of cable distributor Asia Cable Communications Inc. (ACCION), said that "as the problem involves several pirated channels, revenue losses each year form illegal broadcasting on cable TV is likely to be several hundreds of millions of pesos."

Illegal cable broadcasting takes many forms. One is the interception of cable programming services without the authorization of or payment to the cable operator. Another kind is the showing of films or programs from VHS tapes, VCDs and DVDs by the cable operator without authorization.

But industry members said the most common form of illegal broadcasting in the Philippines involves the use of foreign receivers and decoders known as "black boxes."

Pirate cable operators use these black boxes to downlink program signals — usually sports and movie channels — from foreign satellites and retransmit them through cable to local subscribers.

At the moment, the signals most commonly downlinked by pirates are from Indovision, an Indonesian pay TV company that offers direct-to-home access to cable programs to subscribers in Indonesia.

Some cable operators buy several black boxes to retransmit a full range of channels through their local cable systems.

The motive is a good and fast profit since the cost of several black boxes — around P70,000 each — may work out cheaper than the monthly subscriptions paid by operators to program providers through program distributors.

Viewers can often tell if a signal is being broadcast illegally. Tell-tale signs are foreign language advertisements, announcements or subtitles, and the appearance of the logo of the satellite pay TV operator (usually called the "bug") on the top left or right hand side of the screen.

In these situations, it is possible that the cable operator is charging subscription fees for the channel and its programs which it has no rights to air and for which it does not make any payments to the real owners.

To help reduce the incidence of illegal broadcasting, Hong Kong-based program provider STAR recently announced it would package its top channels — ESPN, STAR Sports, STAR Movies, STAR World and National Geographic Channel.

STAR said it will offer the channels to cable operators at 40 percent lower than the cost if they take channels individually under a "one-stop-shop" approach as a means of giving legitimate cable operators a break in pricing.

This approach is also seen as a strong measure against cable piracy since the pricing break that STAR is offering will only be applicable to legitimate operators.

STAR regional director Charles Pollard said this will greatly benefit cable operators who make a full and accurate declaration of their subscriber numbers.

"Cable operators who prefer to continue under-declaring their subscriber numbers will not enjoy the new low rates. We intend to deal with cable operators honestly and even-handedly," Pollard said.

STAR lamented that legitimate cable operators in the country have suffered from piracy. "Despite warnings, many still use foreign and illegally imported decoders and many submit fake subscriber names and addresses. It breaks all international norms and standards of commercial behavior and respect for intellectual property right," Pollard added.

ACCION’s Esguerra also admitted that while the industry has actively lobbied regulators to address the piracy issue, much work still needs to be done in putting teeth to the cable anti-piracy drive.

He said the National Telecommunication Commission (NTC) has already informed cable TV operators that it is the Intellectual Property Office (IPO) under the Trade and Industry Department that is in charge since intellectual property is involved in cable piracy.

"Although the IPO admitted that they have jurisdiction, the discussions have not been very encouraging," Esguerra said.

ACCION, along with other cable programmers like Cableboss, have been working closely with the NTC to address direct-to-home feed piracy. "We’re talking again to NTC and the case is no longer piracy but ‘illegal rebroadcast’ of the DTH feeds. Illegal rebroadcast falls under NTC’s jurisdiction and cases will soon be filed," Esguerra said.