The Czech Association of Commercial Televisions (AKTV) has won an important legal victory in the fight against piracy.
This follows a ruling by the High Court in Olomouc confirming a preliminary measure issued by the Regional Court in Brno obliging the storage operators eDisk.cz and Sledujteto.cz to stop recording and downloading protected works of Nova and Prima, the country’s two leading commercial TV broadcasters. The court thus confirmed AKTV’s argument that the repository operators committed anti-competitive conduct referred to as “black passengering” or “free riding” (also known as “impermissible parasitic exploitation”). Similar decisions were also issued against other repositories in the past months.
AKTV notes that TV broadcasters have long been spending large sums of money on the creation of original Czech series and other audiovisual works that are subsequently published as part of the TV broadcast or online video libraries Voyo and Prima+. However, at the same time, these exclusive series, movies or shows are illegally distributed through internet repositories, where they are available for users to download or play online, practically immediately after their official publication. These repositories, such as eDisk.cz or Sledujteto.cz, not only provide their users with space to upload and download these works, but they themselves also support such illegal actions by rewarding active users who upload popular titles that other users then download or watch online.
Commenting on the court rulings, Klara Brachtlova, the president of AKTR, said: “The decisions of the Regional Court in Ostrava and the Regional Court in Brno, both of which were confirmed by the High Court in Olomouc, represent a significant breakthrough in our current decision-making practice and a very important signal for all copyright holders. Every year we spend hundreds of millions of crowns to produce original Czech works for our viewers, while practically all works are illegally shared immediately after publication. This fundamentally harms our business model and reduces our return on investment. It is absurd that storage operators profit significantly from our attractive content, for example by selling download credits or even advertising placed next to our copyrighted content”.
