Sources within the telecommunications industry are once again warning that a recent ruling by the Greek and Cypriot Courts against those who sell the keys to decode pay TV services could affect some thousands of users in Malta, should a similar legal campaign be mounted – but the warning is beginning to sound like a “cry wolf”.
Every time there is a campaign mounted abroad, sources from the industry warn that the same thing could easily happen here but, in spite of police investigations in autumn 2011, there are no records that anyone in Malta was ever charged.
Even AACT, the local association against copyright theft, has given up and is virtually dormant.
There were recently 12 arrests, and 17 sentences have been handed down in Greece and Cyprus since 2010, with the heftiest sentence being a nine-year jail term, and penalties of up to €32,000. One reason for the mounting pressure against piracy is that changes were made to the legislation there which enables criminal prosecutions.
The providers of pay TV in Malta, Go and Melita have long lamented that piracy was being ignored by the government and law enforcement authorities. Last year, then CCO (now CEO) of Go Yiannos Michaelides, warned that it was a deterrent for investment in the sector as well as a tax loss for the State.
Melita told Times of Malta Business: “Card-sharing satellite services give access, at a charge, to channels which are not authorised to broadcast in this territory and without contributing license fees. They are also offering a telecommunications service without being duly authorised or licensed. This unfair practice is skewing the market, creating expectations of pricing which are unrealistic in relation to the economics of the TV content market.”
Melita also pointed out that the use of Dreambox has an impact on companies like itself and GO which invest heavily in TV content: “The impact of such services hinders those genuine customers opting for legal routes, who end up paying more for their services because the cost is shared amongst a smaller client base, therefore not representative of the total potential market for pay TV.”
The scale of the problem is sometimes underestimated: The Broadcasting Authority survey for July-December 2012 reported that 17.38 per cent of those who have TV access it through internet systems such as Dreambox – which translates to nearly 65,000 people.
The figures released by the National Statistics Office are also proof that the problem is growing and that it is having an impact on the local pay TV providers. At the end of 2012, pay TV subscriptions were down for the first time since 2009, by 1.2 per cent compared with a year earlier, although they recovered slightly in the first quarter of the year.
The Dreambox is a satellite receiver connected to a dish on the roof and the internet. A series of codes are used to gain access to channels offering sports, films and other content. This is known as card sharing.
The device itself is not an illegal receiving unit. The problem lies with illegal software patches and subscriber cards which are developed and distributed by Pay-TV hackers, often for half the price of the originals. Shops selling satellite reception equipment offer the system without the content. Other stores ask customers for their IP internet address to furnish them with the codes to unlock their favourite channels. This comes against a monthly fee of between €15 and €36, with the cheapest giving the user access to the basic channels.
Premier League and the Italian Serie A matches are available through Dreambox but their transmission in Malta is illegal because no one holds the rights to transmit the games in Malta via satellite channels, such as Sky UK or Sky Italia.