DEARBORN — On Monday, June 8 the International Broadcasting Coalition Against Piracy (IBCAP), an organization of leading international broadcasters, announced actions it is taking to combat piracy and copyright infringement during a press conference at the Regency Dearborn Hotel and Convention Center. 

The coalition, which represents more than 90 television channels from the Middle East and South Asia, actively monitors and identifies unauthorized video services, collects evidence and assists with legal actions and criminal investigations against organizations and individuals engaging in pirated activities. 

IBCAP members, including Al Jazeera Media Network and MBC, recently filed a lawsuit in federal court in the eastern district of Virginia against CresIPTV, Shava TV and related dealers for allegedly engaging in the unauthorized distribution of copyright content. 

 “We will not tolerate the illegal distribution of Arabic channels in the U.S.” said Karim Abdullah, CEO of IMD, distributor of channels such as ART, LBC, LDC, Hekayet and NewTV. 

Customers of these unauthorized services, many of whom have paid $300 or more for a set top box, are often left without their favorite channels when legal action occurs or the unauthorized services shut them down. Those providing unauthorized content are engaging in direct copyright infringement and the dealers selling such services may be held liable by engaging in secondary copyright infringement. 

Those who spoke at the press conference included Osama Siblani, publisher of The Arab American News; Chris Kuelling, senior vice president, international programming at DISH Network and Sling; Joe Boyle, an attorney for IBCAP; Zainab Ali, general manager, international marketing at Sling TV; Joshua Burt, national sales manager, DISH International Programming Sales; Samir Ibrahim, director of Global Sales Ad Distribution, Al Jazeera Media Network; Mohamed A. Elkhashab, president of Reach Media and Haytham Elmokadem, founder and president, World Span Media Consulting. 

Siblani asked members of the community to help the coalition in its efforts of fighting piracy and copyright infringement.  He also encouraged DISH Network to invest and get more involved in the community by reaching out to local Arab American organizations. 

“The purveyors of pirated content are often deceptive, leading customers to believe they are buying services with authorized channels when in fact many of the top channels are being pirated,” Boyle said. 

He also said piracy and copyright infringement is costing channel owners money because the unauthorized providers are not paying for the channels. Copyright infringers operate all over the world and they typically operate from outside the United States. They stream the content into the United States without authorization. 

“DISH would lose subscribers, but the channels like NBC or Al Jazeera or any of these who actually get paid by DISH are losing revenue,” Kuelling said. “And if they don’t have enough revenue come in, they can’t invest in the content to keep up the high quality content.”

The launch of Sling Arabic and the introduction of new Arabic channels on DISH and Sling were also discussed at the conference. 

Kuelling said there has been significant progress made in stopping piracy and copyright infringement.  

“One of the reasons we are here is to raise awareness so that the community and consumers know that a lot of the services out there that claim to have certain rights actually don’t,” he said. “People may pay a lot of money to buy some sort of box and they claim to have the channels, and the channels disappear and then the customer is very upset. So we are here to really educate consumers on how to research and check who is authorized and who is not.”