The Czech broadcasters Nova, Prima and Ocko have reached a major milestone in the fight against illegally shared content.
This follows the signing of a landmark cooperation agreement with I&Q GROUP through the Association of Commercial Televisions (AKTV) related to content sharing platforms on the domains Hellshare.cz, Hellspy.cz and Hellspy.sk. The first of its kind between copyright holders and a repository, it governs the application of automatic filters when searching for and uploading content in relation to selected copyrighted works of commercial broadcasters.
Commenting on the agreement, Jan Vlcek, president of AKTV and CEO of TV Nova, said: “Our primary goal is to minimise the amount of our illegally shared content online. We invest large sums in the order of hundreds of millions a year in production, and such a massive violation of copyrights, as we are witnessing in the Czech Republic, significantly reduces the return on our investments. In the end, this is mainly determined by how much money is returned to the production of additional original and attractive content for Czech viewers.
“The agreement with I&Q GROUP is a good signal for us that a common language can be found that will help prevent massive depreciation of our investments, and that is not unreasonably time- or financially demanding for storage operators. It should also send a signal to uploaders that sharing protected content is not legal. We greatly appreciate the approach of I&Q GROUP in this matter, we look forward to further cooperation and believe that the example of the Hellshare and Hellspy platforms will inspire other operators as well. We are open to cooperation”.
An essential part of the agreement is the ongoing cooperation between the broadcasters and the I&Q GROUP company and the updating of the set filters so that legally uploaded content is not blocked, but at the same time that their effectiveness is as high as possible.
Jan Hrebabecky, CEO of I&Q GROUP, said: “We developed and deployed the filters prepared in cooperation with AKTV at the beginning of the autumn television season, and we have already spent several weeks testing them in practice. We can therefore state that they provide relatively easy and effective filtering of copyrighted content, which is especially important for services of our type in light of the upcoming amendment to the Copyright Act, which imposes new obligations on us in this area”.
