The Audiovisual Anti-Piracy Alliance was launched in Paris on December 17, building upon the work of its predecessor AEPOC.
AAPA represents the major players in the pay-TV industry, including the largest technology security vendors. The Alliance’s mission is to support the fight against piracy where this involves the development, promotion, distribution, application or use of technologies resulting in the unauthorised use of protected audiovisual content.
AAPA’s role is to facilitate the co-ordination of intelligence and anti-piracy activities amongst its members and to interact with EU institutions to ensure that there is effective legislation to achieve successful enforcement action.
Commenting on the launch of AAPA, VP Christine Maury-Panis, general counsel at Viaccess, said that: “Piracy never goes away. As new technologies emerge and new ways of distributing audiovisual content become more popular, it is crucial that we have all the possible tools to work with collaboratively against the persistent threat of piracy, which causes enormous damage to jobs in the creative and other sectors. AAPA provides an efficient industry alliance which is able to support the fight against piracy of paid content delivered via the set top box, mobile phone, tablet, etc.”
Launching AAPA at the HbbTV Symposium in Paris, Sheila Cassells, AAPA executive director, commented that: “At IBC two years ago we started a discussion about the security issues surrounding connected TV. Since then AAPA members have been active in developing security for smart TVs, etc and making OTT content available. We need to ensure that all stakeholders recognise the importance of implementing and maintaining content security robustly and this Symposium provides an opportunity to continue to reinforce this message.”
Current AAPA members are BSkyB, Conax, Eutelsat, INSIDE Secure, Irdeto, Liberty Global, Melita, Nagra, NDS, Nova, Open Tech, Pace, Sky Deutschland, Sky Italia, Verimatrix, Viaccess, Ziggo and Zon.
