The Hungarian Communications Association (MKSZ) has suggested the deployment of a “21st century IT weapon”, namely the legal DDOS attack, to address the problem of linear broadcasting and VOD piracy.
In a statement, it says that illegal companies are taking advantage of the opportunity provided by high-speed internet access to sell such services in OTT/IPTV format for a fee, thereby short-changing beneficiaries and the state of hundreds of millions of Hungarian forints a year. MKSZ adds that although such piracy is under current law punishable by up to two years in prison, detection is very difficult. In recent years its members have reported more than a hundred illegal distributors to the authorities, many of which are still under investigation. However, to date only one case has been closed, with the perpetrator receiving a one year suspended sentence and made to pay compensation for the damage caused.
MKSZ says it is taking the initiative to set up a round table discussion with the participation of representatives of all domestic stakeholders (legislators, copyright and neighbouring rights holders, internet service providers, broadcasters) and consider whether it would be possible to effectively solve the problem with the introduction of appropriate legal guarantee elements, namely applying DDOS attacks.
This would be done legally and with international transparency by designating a certain IPv4/IPv6 address range for the use of legal and registered DDOS attacks and make them publicly available.
The authority should appoint a suitable professional organisation, which would be entitled – subject to the necessary level of official supervision and control – after a preliminary expert investigation based on a stakeholder report, in possession of the appropriate legal authority, against the detected illegal service IP addresses launched from the authorised DDOS address range for a legitimate DDOS attack. This would degrade the quality of the illegal distributor’s service and ruin the viewer experience, because the illegal content would not be available, or only intermittently, or not at all for the subscribers to the illegal service.
The MKSZ statement concludes by saying MKSZ invites the Hungarian Electronic Broadcasters Association (MEME), which represents the rights owners of most domestic television channels, and its members to start a professional consultation on this topic and provide an opportunity to hold the first meeting, and to inform the public about the initiative to the best of their ability, that it was started in the name of the fight against illegal broadcasting. It recommends inviting representatives of the following additional organisations to the initial consultation: IM, NAV, TIM, NMHH, National Cyber Defence Institute, ProArt, Artisjus, Filmjus, EJI/Mahasz, ISZT and MKHSZ.
