CASBAA takes on content piracy in Asia with the formation of CAP

CASBAA, the Asian trade body serving the pay-TV industry, has created a coalition against piracy targeting Illicit Streaming Devices (ISDs) with the formation of Coalition Against Piracy (CAP).

It has also appointed Neil Gane, an industry veteran in content protection, as the General Manager of CAP. Gane will direct CAP enforcement actions to disrupt, diminish and dismantle pirate enterprises across the region.

The Coalition Against Piracy includes leading video content creators and distributors in Asia. Members are: beIN Sports, Casbaa, Disney, Fox Networks Group, HBO Asia, NBCUniversal, Premier League, Turner Asia-Pacific, A&E Networks, Astro, BBC Worldwide, Media Partners Asia, National Basketball Association, PCCW Media, Sony Pictures Television Networks Asia, True Visions, TV5MONDE, and Viacom International Media Networks.

CASBAA chief policy officer John Medeiros said “One of Casbaa’s primary missions is to bring our members together to join the global fight against content theft. That’s what we are doing in establishing the Cap. Cap will focus on addressing the growing threat of illicit streaming devices (ISDs) and apps, which facilitate massive piracy of movies, sports, TV series and other creative video content. This does great harm to the content creation and distribution industries in Asia, as well as the millions of people who work in the creative economy around the world.”

“The Asia Pacific region has some of the worst rates of online piracy in the world,” said Gane. Formerly with the Hong Kong Police, he has worked on content protection issues for more than a dozen years. He noted that the unprecedented growth in delivery of legal creative content over global broadband networks is being undermined by a surge in the sale of TV boxes with pre-loaded infringing applications.

Online video and broadband distribution has the potential to be a massive economic growth engine in Asia with analysts forecasting market growth of more than 20 per cent over the next five years, benefiting consumers and creators of quality video content within Asia and around the world. But this growth potential is threatened by piracy.

In the past two years there have been many new roll-outs of online content services across the Asia Pacific region, by existing players as well as new ones. Unfortunately, the likelihood of success for legitimate online content suppliers is severely reduced by online access to pirated content, resulting in the expectation of many consumers to get “something for nothing.”

CAP will be officially launched at the forthcoming CASBAA Convention 2017, 6-8 November 2017, at Studio City Macau, as a highlight of its Policy and Anti-Piracy conference track.