ABS-CBN's anti-piracy efforts hailed for 'massive impact'

A major publication on copyright, privacy and file-sharing has hailed the "massive impact" of ABS-CBN Corp's efforts against piracy, citing the television giant's numerous court victories against pirate sites in the United States.

In a story titled “Media Giant Keeps Seized Revenue from Pirate Sites”, TorrentFreak Founder and Editor-in-Chief Ernesto Van Der Sar cited how ABS-CBN "has already won several cases, with damages ranging from a few hundred thousand to millions of dollars."

He cited how injunctions granted by US courts in the lawsuits "are perhaps even more significant.”

“We previously covered how ABS-CBN managed to get court orders to seize domain names, without the defendants getting actively involved,” wrote Van Der Sar.

“This is also the case in a recent lawsuit where a Florida federal court signed a broad injunction targeting more than two dozen sites that offered the company’s content," he said, citing domain names illegally offering ABS-CBN shows that have been suspended.

“What’s most interesting, however, is that the advertising revenues of these sites were previously frozen. This was done to ensure that ABS-CBN would at least get some money if the defendants failed to respond, a strategy that seems to have paid off," read the Torrent Freak piece.

Van Der Sar cited US District Court Judge Cecilia Altonaga's recent order awarding more than $1 million to the company "in statutory trademark infringement damages" plus previously seized advertising revenues.

“This is the first time, to our knowledge, that a copyright holder has been granted advertising revenue from pirate sites in this manner,” he said.

"This could be a common legal tactic going forward because, generally speaking, it is very hard to get money from defaulting defendants who are relatively anonymous, or living in a foreign jurisdiction,” Van Der Sar added.

ABS-CBN said it has intensified anti-piracy efforts over the last 3 years under former ABS-CBN Global COO Raffy Lopez, currently executive adviser to the company's President and CEO, with the hiring of AVP and Head of Global Anti-Piracy Elisha Lawrence.

News.abs-cbn.com is the official news website of ABS-CBN Corp.